So hope goes.

In 1914, carrying no more than his hopes for a better life, my grandfather came to America from Croatia. Here, he worked twelve-hour days in Chicago’s stockyards. His heavy work boots were always covered in blood. I often wondered what kind of homeland would make his slaughterhouse life a coveted one.

Many years later, I traveled to Croatia. It was beautiful with its Adriatic coastline and lavender and figs growing wild.

However, the  country’s emotional landscape stood in sharp contrast to the land. Many of the Croatian people that I met seemed lost, empty and hopeless. They were kind and welcoming; but after years of civil strife, they had lost any dreams for a better life, of meaningful work, of civil governance, growth or change.

In the years that have followed, my life’s work has brought me face to face with many whose circumstances were desperate but who – through their hopefulness in something better – created something better. These include nomadic tribesmen in Kenya, lepers in Thailand, street children in Albania, victims of political violence in Guatemala, and farmers in Brazil.

The people whom I have been privileged to meet along my life’s journey have deepened my conviction that hopefulness can change everything. These days, I believe that hope is a great alchemist and it is often the first step towards positive change. I also believe that this belief is what brought my grandfather – and many like him – to this country.

Perhaps America’s real gift is not her size or wealth but her hopefulness. No matter how bad things may get here, there’s always hope. We can try again. We can protest and vote and boycott and impeach. We can shake things up. Here, hope does spring eternal – or at least until the next election.

With each new day, as Hal Riney said so well, “It is morning again in America.”

Hope as we might, Americans get no guarantee of happiness of course. But we do get the right to pursue it. And, frankly, the pursuing is where the juice is. That’s what keeps the gambler at the table and the athlete in training. In the pursuing, political theory becomes practical reality, becomes daily life: a job won, a marriage vow taken, a vote cast, a child born, a home bought.

If American hopefulness could be bottled, I suspect that it would be our greatest export, our Perrier. We export this hope today in the form of American music, literature, art, television, films and culture. One brush with The Bachelor, The Donald, Deepak, Oprah, Ahhnold, Aretha, Madonna, Beyonce, Barney, O’Keefe, Koons, Ice-T, Jay-Z, Tinkerbell, Kermit or the Kardashians and you know that here, anything is possible.

(For this reason, I’ve come to appreciate all forms of creative expression, even those that I basically dislike. For this same reason, I’ve also come to cherish those that reach higher, that speak to the best that is in us.)

I once interviewed families living in the garbage dumps of Guatemala. In the middle of the interview, at the end of a long row of ramshackle housing, makeshift lean-to’s of salvaged cardboard and rusted tin, I noticed a TV antenna. Apparently, one lucky resident had found a broken television, which he managed to repair and, now, everybody gathered each night to watch it. “What’s your favorite program?” I asked. The response was unanimous and passionate: “Dynasty!” I was horrified. “Do you believe that people really live that way?” I inquired. “No, but it’s nice to think that they could.”

Hoping and dreaming are the original soul food.

Our hopefulness is also our Achille’s heel, the soft underbelly of our character. At times, with our sites fixed on the hope of what could or should be, we have been woefully blinded to the horrendous reality of what is. Although Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, America did not strike against Germany until 1942. Although reports of the deception surrounding Vietnam were widely published in 1971, our last troops did not withdraw until March of 1973.

Our hope-induced blindness can make us somnambulists to an array of Pied Pipers: politicians promoting increased debt in the name of economic recovery, advertisers touting youthful skin, television evangelists, pyramid schemes, diet plans, everything in Las Vegas. If you live in the hope that all things are possible, then you’re a soft target for every snake oil huckster with a spiel.

An advertising art director once told me, “ If you want to have your yin, ya gotta have your yang.” Everything brings its opposite to the party.

My mother now lives in Chicago’s south suburbs. Visiting her, amidst an endless sea of blacktopped parking lots and four-flat apartment buildings, I see people from many nations in lively, messy pursuit of their dreams. Like my grandfather, they have come in the hope of a better life.

I don’t know that they’ll find the better life they’ve come for.  But if they don’t, their children might. Or their grandchildren.

So hope goes.