Hoarders, Hope, and Dreamers

Currently, one of my favorite shows is Raising Hope. And I have to say, I'm really worried that it will be cancelled as it isn't really being raved about much. In which case I will be absolutely heartbroken.

If you haven't seen the premiere, trust me. Invest the 20 minutes, and I doubt you'll regret it. Here's the run down (which has spoilers), granted you're missing almost all of the comedic moments.

Teenager Jimmy meets a girl who, unknown to him, is escaping from her murder scene. Dark as it starts, it's rather humorous. Watch it for yourself if your judging me. It's a feat to pack this much into an one-hour pilot, much less the first half of a half hour one. The bottom line: Jimmy is left to raise this baby. His parents aren't excited about it (they are not much older than Jimmy himself), but finally, they agree and choose the name: Hope.

In episode three, Jimmy makes plans to baby proof the house, including the greenhouse which is mother has taken over with her hobby: hoarding (since I love watching Hoarders, this was even more perfect). But before he can get started, Hope wonders in and gets lost in the clutter. After creatively removing her (you can't miss how they do it), Jimmy lectures his parents on how they all need to change their focuses to raise Hope. No more lottery tickets for dad, hoarding for his mom, or even flirting with Sabrina, the cute-but-taken girl at the grocery store, himself. Their moods become somewhat somber.

He happens to run into Sabrina one night and learns she dropped her creative writing class, partly because her dad didn't think much of the short story she had been working on. Jimmy encourages her not to quit. What if she made it big? Who knows, it could happen. ("Where the hell did you learn to be so positive, it's infections!")

Reflecting on growing up with his parents playing the lottery to buy a new house and collecting stuff that they could put in it, he realizes that although he didn't grow up in a perfect home, he was given the confidence to dream. And that's what he wants for Hope, too.

It's was a beautiful episode. Maybe I'm going a little over the top because it was something I needed to hear. Maybe I'm overboard just because the mom was a hoarder and they had a genius scene to the song "Istanbul Not Constantinople." But overall, it's a story about a family who is odd and slightly dysfunctional but happy and, cliche as it is, focused on what's important: each other.

It's John Lennon's birthday, a man famous for singing about his dream. We all start out as dreamers before we figure out that it's more complicated than that. We hang onto realistic ones, letting go the others we get discouraged by. Sometimes it's easier to give up than be disappointed. But don't let your confidence slip. Just because things look one way today doesn't mean they'll be that way tomorrow. Make little changes towards your goals. Live big, live different, live you.

Where you want to be is not impossible. You wouldn't have much of a story to tell if things weren't hard. In the tough moments, always remember that it really does get better.