Hope Springs Eternal

The more I think about the events of the past year, the more convinced I am that we lonely adults looking for someone with whom to adorn our arms or garnish our lives enter each potential relationship filled with hope. We hope we can find some wonderfulness that we remember from a successful time in a relationship past. Or we hope all our unhappiness is behind us.

So we burst through the door like the proverbial bull in the china shop. And we ascribe goodness to every occurrence. And we ignore any potential problems. And we hope beyond all hope that this person is Mr./Ms. Right, having arrived in the nick of time to banish our loneliness; may it never reappear.

The real challenge is to land somewhere on the broad spectrum between unflagging hope and devastating despair.