The idea of hope is hard to swallow. Especially when it rests on another person’s shoulders.
It goes along with the cliche phrase “don’t get your hopes up,” and the idea that high expectations in others can only lead to great falls. It’s a skewed mindset, but it is easy to cave into. Unless you saw the idea of hope from a different frame of reference.
Enter City of Hope
Two months ago, I had the chance to take a tour of City of Hope. It’s an incredible cancer comprehensive center in Duarte, California that believes in not only healing the body, but the soul as well. One of the most interesting things about COH is that their hospital was purposely built across from the research center. Every day cancer patients sit in front of windows overlooking a courtyard and a building where scientists spend hours on end trying to find a cure. And every day researchers look across the same lawn to see the faces of the people who believe they can do it.
Hope is the fuel behind the patient’s drive to survive and the researcher’s drive to keep trying. It’s a high hope that chooses to believe more in another person than on possible outcomes or falls. It’s a high hope that in my opinion can become a game changer.
Enter This Video
Recently the agency I work for and COH teamed up to produce this film to raise awareness about the bone marrow registry. In the process we were smitten by the story and by Gavin.
This video is proof of how much we need each other and it’s proof that as my coworker put it life is “pretty damn precious.”
A month after this video’s first preview, I got in my car. I drove a couple hours away from my pride to fix a friendship that means the world to me. As I stood at the top of a windy ledge overlooking a lamp-lit city, I breathed for the first time, laughed with someone I hadn’t let myself laugh with in a long long time, and realized every day should be like this. I am snot-nosed. I am lucky. And life is too sweet to waste on anything less worthy than loving someone else. Regardless of what may come.
Two Things:
- Help make more stories like Gavin’s possible by clicking here.
- Let yourself love and care about the people you are blessed enough to have standing by your side.
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