That bird called Hope

Wotta delighful day! And all because I got lucky!

Was trying to remember this particular paragraph in Emily's Quest by Lucy Maud Montgomery of the famous Anne of Green Gables Series when I came across Project Gutenberg! It has a vast collection of ebooks and here's the best part ... all of them are freely downloadable!

There is also another site hosted by Project Gutenberg, supposedly for books with an 'Australian' flavor... but I found some non-Australian flavored books here which I couldn't spot at the site in United States. If you know of any more such sites please let me know.

Anyways back to the paragraph I couldn't remember, here it is ...
Once, when Emily had been very small, living with her father down in the little old house at Maywood, where he had died, she had started out to seek the rainbow's end. Over long wet fields and hills she ran, hopeful, expectant. But as she ran the wonderful arch was faded--was dim--was gone. Emily was alone in an alien valley, not too sure in which direction lay home. For a moment her lips quivered, her eyes filled. Then she lifted her face and smiled gallantly at the empty sky.

"There will be other rainbows," she said.

Emily was a chaser of rainbows.

This paragraph was the author's attempt to introduce the reader to Emily. And somehow years after I last read the book, I keep remembering this paragraph. Maybe because I identify with it. Even when I first read it, the paragraph had jumped out of the page and shaken hands with me... I understood Emily, after reading 2 pages full of how Emily 'looks', this paragraph was the actual introduction. Not only because like her I was a chaser of rainbows, but also because through this hopeless chase for the seemingly un-catchable and the unattainable I never lose hope.

I have always been an optimist... incurably so. Yes, I do get pulled under and I do get depressed over events, slights, fights ... but eventually and always, my undying hopefulness pulls me up. AG always says that every person has a keyword he/she lives by and mine is 'extremes' :) or as Thels' puts it ... "passion".

When I am sad I am in the depths of sorrow, over the smallest of things, I grieve like I have been struck by a tragedy. And when I am happy I am ecstatic... again the teeniest of happenings is capable of lifting me to the zeniths of joydom.

I consider it as providence... this gift of mine to grieve and let go and then look forward... always look ahead to possibilities. To take failures, disappointments in my stride and then say to myself ... "Hmmm, what can I do to get me outta this? what can i do to make things better? Surely there is a way."

Strange girl she is ... this Hope! Living on the edges within grab's reach...