Audrey A McGee

TW: Mentions of depression and suicidal thinking.

Hope is the thing that’s been on my mind for this entire year. I think I’ve just gotten a bit of insight into why it’s so important to me, as a person and an artist.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing, and what keeps coming out are these images that a lot of people interpret as purgatory. Faeries trapped inside time; a restaurant with no food; an endless ladder stretching into the sky.

Particularly with my trapped faeries, I knew that I had to come up with some sort of happy ending, or hopeful ending. Something that wasn’t a Waiting for Godot, or No Exit. As I was talking with my writing group this morning, I thought — “Why would someone write a play without hope? If nothing changes, why are we even watching this?”

Which led me to a new statement that I think will carry through all of my work:

If there’s no hope in it, then there’s no point in writing it.

what people think of hope

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”

–Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Many people look at hope with disdain, thinking that it is blind and foolish. Others may look at it with offense, thinking that it purposely disregards pain.

I am tired of people looking down on hope. Hope is all I have.

Let me clarify what hope means.

where hope has to start

I am not unaware of the brokenness of humanity, to the point of us being, indeed, hopeless. Hope, by necessity, has to come from a dark place.

Back in fall of 2020, after several consecutive events that hurt me deeply, I wrote what I called my Depression Manifesto: “If you ever let your heart have a spark, you will end up exhausted, disappointed, or heartbroken.” I was determined not to be hopeful, so I could protect myself from even worse sorrow.

I was supported in my despair. A good portion of people are very keen on reminding everyone of how awful the world is. Some of that is done with the intent to fix said world, but, as many acknowledge, nothing really gets better.

Micah Bournes talks about this in his poem, “Thank God for Evolution.” Humans love to think that we are getting better, that we are changing, but we are not — as is proven by the sickening practice of slavery that only changes shape every century or so.

Oh, and if you want a real existential crisis, go read the first 11 verses of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. It has the best opening lines:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.”

The infamous “there is nothing new under the sun” comes from that same passage.

I actually weaponized the Bible against hope when I was depressed. Here’s the key passage that I couldn’t get out of my head, from Genesis 6:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

If God Himself regretted that He made human beings, WHY ON EARTH did He spare them? I remember screaming at God, telling Him that He should have wiped us all out in the flood, not sparing anyone. Everyone can see that we are ruining this earth, hurting ourselves, hurting each other.

Humanity cannot be fixed. I still maintain that belief.

I actually flatter myself by thinking that I have a better understanding of despair than most people.

Because, to be perfectly honest, if Jesus wasn’t real, I would kill myself.

My hope is not uninformed.

when hope does start

As it is, Jesus is real.

I don’t have to be alone in my own horrifying head.

The nightmarish futures that I fear, the wretched thoughts that I think, the mistakes that trap me in shame — these things do not rule me anymore.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)

I am not the same person I was, and I actually have the promise that one day, I will be perfectly and permanently transformed. As it is, I am actively loved. I am completely forgiven. I am totally sheltered. My hope does not rest on my inconstant and feeble efforts, nor on those of other people, but on the perfect work of the only perfect Man to walk this earth.

Isn’t it marvelous to know that, even though we will never be perfect in this life, there is Someone who is?

Holiness is real, perfection is no myth, there is something out there that is better than ourselves, we who keep screwing everything up.

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”

2 Corinthians 12:9a (NIV)

Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:21-23 (NIV)

hope as foolishness

If my hope is foolish, allow my friend Tolkien to speak up for me:

“Tell me,” [Pippin] said, “is there any hope? For Frodo, I mean; or at least mostly for Frodo.”
Gandalf put his hand on Pippin’s head. “There never was much hope,” he answered. “Just a fool’s hope, as I have been told.”

…

“Comfort me not with wizards!” said Denethor. “The fool’s hope has failed. The Enemy has found it, and now his power waxes; he sees our very thoughts, and all we do is ruinous.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Rereading the Lord of the Rings absolutely shattered my depression back in 2023, as I was recovering from multiple addictions and coping by listening to audiobooks. Most people know Denethor as the guy with the tomatoes.

Beyond the memes, and to my own horror, I found myself relating to Denethor. He was absolutely certain of Sauron’s imminent victory, which would lead to his defeat, shame, and slavery. Denethor refused this possibility and chose, instead, to end his own life, on his own terms. It made perfect sense, and was exactly what I had been telling myself.

The thing is, Denethor was wrong.

He had used the palantir, a seeing-stone, to observe others and see the future. But Sauron, the enemy, the liar, had a palantir of his own, and projected things into Denethor’s mind that were, as of yet, untrue.

And they never were.

Because the sliver of hope, the mission that was ridiculously dangerous, laughably impossible — came true. The fool’s hope was fulfilled.

There are stories that ring true for a reason. I saw that Denethor was wrong. I saw that I was wrong. The fool’s hope was truer than the sage’s despair.

If Tolkien wasn’t enough, Lewis came to back him up:

“One word, Ma’am,” [Puddleglum] said… “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so.

“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things — trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones...

“That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper… we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Lewis was a firm believer in the fact that our hopes speak to something truer than what we see here on earth, as ridiculous as that sounds. One of my absolute favorite quotes from him is from Mere Christianity:

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

And Tolkien wrote this, in his epic essay “On Fairy-Stories”:

Why should a man be scored if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.

Fantasy is escapist, of course, but good fantasy is written to make us think of the things that are more real than what we see — escaping from the prison of this world and its despair. We may be fools, but like Shakespeare’s clowns, we are wiser than the wisdom of those around us.

Oh, and did you know that the Bible mentions this as well?

We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ…

1 Corinthians 4:9b-10a

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

1 Corinthians 15:19

For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:25 (NIV)

what it means for my work

Hope does not neglect the truth of the broken world; one actually has to see and acknowledge the brokenness before hope can even be considered.

It does not necessarily mean a happy ending. In fact, it can often mean that we don’t even see the ending.

It is nothing to be discarded or disdained. I truly believe that I have nothing in my life except for the hope of Christ. How are we supposed to carry on in this broken world believing that this is all there is?

Hope is a discarded commodity right now, and story can restore it to its rightful place. Story has already borne so much witness to the fact that hope is real.

The plan is that you’d be able to read or watch anything that I write and clearly see that there’s always some hope, some way out. I don’t even think it’s my choice. At the height of my depression, I wrote a story that ended up with hope I didn’t even believe in at the time. But keep me accountable, all the same.

If you have thoughts — arguments — whatever — please share them. I want this to be a conversation in our culture, and even on my page. It’s obviously a very personal and passionate subject for me, and it’s based on my experiences. What have yours been?