Today I was walking to the library when I encountered an old man. He was standing still on the sidewalk, wearing a thick grey sweater and brown shorts, muttering something to himself. As I got closer, I heard that he was repeating one phrase over and over again.

It will be fine. It will be fine. It will be fine.

Just then it began to rain. Still he stood there, chanting. Do you want an umbrella, I asked him. He looked up, surprised by my presence, then felt his forehead, as if only just realising he was outdoors, and hurried away without a word. As he went away I noticed he walked with a limp and wasn’t wearing any socks. His white ankles stuck out against the backdrop of brick buildings like a daisy in soil.

My friend, I wanted to say to him, I have no idea what horrors and hardships you have seen, how broken and beaten down the world has left you in, and how long you have been chanting this wish, but I also pray your situation will be fine, whatever it is. It is dangerous to hope, but in many times hope is all we have.

“Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.