When I started Yours Hopefully I was prompted to put in a tagline so readers knew what they would be getting. A reasonable request, but not an easy one, because I wasn’t sure what you would be getting!
I thought about being specific – the success of newsletters is, apparently, dependent on clarity on your topic and audience. But I knew I wouldn’t keep to it and would come to resent the constraint. Not a good path for me.
But I had to write something. So, with little deliberation, I wrote:
‘Yours Hopefully, an experiment in living hopefully. With science and songs’.
Science and song
I like the words science and song together. The alliteration and cadence are pleasing, and whenever, however, my demise comes, science and song will have been lifelong companions. I am their child. They are my parents; my comfort and my inspiration. As we walk through life, hand-in-hand, they swing me up high in the air, like a toddler; I am flying. Then they cushion my return to earth, ready for the next swing.
It is an unusual combination of passions, or so people tell me. This delights me – being unusual feels more exciting than being usual. But it also disappoints me. It short-changes both my parents, reflecting lazy societal stereotypes based on a fundamental underestimation of their breadth and reach. We all embrace and are embraced by science and song. Any naysayers are misguided!
And what of hope
How does hope interplay with my twin passions? Hope is a muse and medium of music. We turn to music when in need of hope, we turn to music when we express hope. The connection is strong and direct, silk and steel, and beautiful of course, they spin an enchanting web.
The connection between science and hope is foggier, slippery. It should be there, particularly in medicine, but I can’t wrap my fingers around it.
In medical science the first step in research is to look at PubMed – a compendium of the medical literature – to see what previous research has been done on the topic. I put ‘hope[Title]’ in the search box and am rewarded with 8,618 results. This might seem a lot, but Pubmed includes 30 million citations. Surely hope is worthy of more study – would anyone argue against its role in health?
I idly wonder how you would investigate the relevance of hope on recovery from illness. There are some basic considerations – the definition of hope, how you would measure it, etc. The answers are not immediately obvious, but they are not insurmountable, and they are similar to things we often study in medicine (there are 500,000 research papers on depression in PubMed).
The more I think about it, the more surprising our lack of attention to the science of hope seems. A topic to return to……...
The hopefulness of science
What about the reciprocal relationship – the hope of science. Here we are on firm and fertile ground. Hope is a leading actor in every tale of scientific exploration. It is the boundless sea that science sails on. The sustenance that science depends on. Hope drove Marie Curie day-after-relentless-day for the years it took to extract one-tenth of a gram of radium. Hope picked Edison up after each of his 10,000 failed attempts to make a light bulb.
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” Thomas Edison
These are typical words used to describe scientists: curious, detail-oriented, persistent, critical-thinkers, problem-solvers, rationale, objective. They are all true, but most of us do not have all these characteristics, and none of us have enough of the ones we do have.
Hopefulness is never stated as a characteristic of scientists. Some scientists might even consider it an insult, an attack on their scientific method.
I would disagree. Being hopeful is a universal characteristic of every fulfilled scientist I have known.
If we could work out how to study it……………
Yours hopefully,
Nazneen xxx
Yours Hopefully is a weekly experiment in living hopefully. With songs. Why not subscribe and get a post every Sunday in your inbox?
Really enjoyed this article, Nazneen. Hope is the abiding passion here in America right now. Hope the pandemic can be stopped, using science. Hope we can save the ship of state that has floundered for four long years. Hope we can rejoin the world again as an equal partner in addressing the global problems. Hope we can finally find true justice for all.
Thanks for your insights, my friend. Keep singing.
Dear Nazneen, an interesting piece I liked the examples of Marie Curie and Thomas Edison that you cited. We all live in Hope for a better life for ourselves and those closest and dearest to us. Best wishes. Denis ❤️