In the past few months, we got rid of cable and now filter our tv viewing through Netflix/Hulu. I do miss The Real Housewives. I really, really do. BUT. I am in the middle of the first season of Glee and I am loving it. I think it's kind of a summer thing - some kind of nostalgia for youth, but not like "Glory Days" nostalgia, more like an appreciation of youthfulness. I especially like Glee because the youth portrayed seems more believable to me than, say Gossip Girls (I've never watched it, but they seem way more sophisticated than my suburban St. Louis high school.) Glee's youth, at least in the first season, is actually kind of innocent and full of music. This youth is full of un-coolness, and a lack of irony. This was my kind of youth.
There's a lot that is painful and embarassing about it, but this is the thing I like about youth and I'm being reminded in a number of places - from the pool, to Glee, to the "bios" for my kids' zoo camp counselors: youth hopes. It might be frivolous, missplaced, or unrealistic, but it is hope! It hasn't been beaten out them. Remember the melodramatic scene in The Breakfast Club (as if there's only one melodramatic scene!), where Allly Sheedy's character says, "when you grow up (dramatic pause) your heart dies.' Well, it can be kind of true. Being grown up often runs the gamut from kind of hard to very hard.
For my mental health, it's nice to occasionally indulge in some of that innocent pleasure called hope and exuberance. Sometimes I have to seek it out because it's not finding me - I watch Glee or I listen to a song that conveys something awesome to me. No matter how cool or grown up I think I am, I get chills and feel like falling in love every time I hear "Don't Stop Believing" (Journey, circa 1981).
I think I've written before here that the Dalai Lama cautions against hope, because it reflects an attachment to an outcome. I am here to say, in this instance (and probably only this instance) I disagree with the Dalai Lama. I think there's something awesome about hoping - not for any specific thing, but allowing yourself, for a few moments to just hope. Who knows what the future will be, but for a little while, let yourself imagine nothing in particular, but that it's a really good one.
One last thought - I found a fun website that makes me feel good and interested, and I sometimes hopeful: http://www.good.is/
In the tarot, the Star card represents Hope. It is the card to come after the Tower--total destruction and devastation. There is nothing left but Hope. That's what we rebuild from, and we become better from that place in the long run.
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