“The waiting is the hardest part.” –Tom Petty
I’ve always thought that being hopeful was a positive quality that classified one as optimistic. I’m not so sure anymore. My friend Jacob claims that having hope is a set up and that it’s better to give up hope from the start and live in the present moment with what actually IS.
I used to consider myself a hopeful person but I’m starting to see how it’s a form of mild expectation. And I’ve learned where that usually leads: straight to disappointment. Like the term “false hope.” Isn’t it just another version of a wish? I know some wishes come true, but more often they don’t.
Silky waited for Douglas Fairbanks for three years before his divorce from Mary Pickford was finalized. I don’t know how she did it. I have a girlfriend who’s been in an on/off relationship with the same non-committal guy for twenty years. Besides being hopeless, I must be terribly impatient.
This week’s photo is a shot of Silky holding her niece Lauretta with her friend, London stage actress Heather Thatcher, and Fairbanks. It was taken shortly after their marriage in Paris in 1936.
Silky and my girlfriend must know something I don‘t. Or they’re just made differently than I am. I don’t seem to be any good at waiting.