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What is hope? Hoping to pass, hoping to travel, hoping to grow…

I think I know how to recognize hope, if not how to define it. I hear it in the way my friend talks about her crush. I see it in the faces of classmates as spring finally peeks through the long Michigan winter. I feel it as I pass the LRC free food table (might get lucky). I also remember, while on home visits in Peru, the way TB patients would always seem to say, “I hope you can help me stay alive.”

But what is hope? Within the confines of the hospital and medical school, it can be a driving force, a fuel to the engine of human action. It keeps students up late, meditating on the minutia of microbiology. It impels physicians and other health providers to do their best for the patient. It keeps patients adherent to treatment regimens. Orisen Swett Marden puts it nicely: “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.”

The expectation of something [better] tomorrow. M1 year has been challenging and rewarding, and while great, I expect more from next year and even more from the year after that. Is that too idealistic? I don’t think so, but only time will tell. I look forward to sharing the journey with you through this blog.

Meeting Esperanza Spalding after her concert at the Michigan Theater.