What with the seemingly impending doom awaiting Peter, it might not come as much of a surprise that the concept of hope was once again treated in this episode. But contrary to the other episode in which hope was featured (Season 2’s 18th episode “White Tulip”), hope was treated in a more poetic kind of way, rather than as a more logical or even philosophically debatable concept.
Dana Grey seems to be telling the suicidal individuals she is trying to help that “there is hope in rain drops”, since each of them “holds a promise of regrowth”. It’s a beautiful way of seeing the positive in something that usually puts a damper on plans – quite literally. The other interesting thing is the way the hope is so potent – water does give life – and yet at the same time vague – to what the water will give life depends on where it lands.
She continues on, telling those individuals that each drop “has a purpose, even if they don’t know it”. As she explains, humans sometimes can feel like they don’t have a purpose, but of course, “we do”. Again the metaphor is a beautiful one; a raindrop not only doesn’t know what life it will help generate, but also, during its long hard and sometimes hard landing on a barren surface, can wonder why it left the ‘comfort’ of its ‘home’, i.e. the cloud.
Oftentimes I have noticed that well-intentioned people who leave the comfort of their day to day lives to try to make a change are easily disillusioned when they ‘meet’ a ‘barren ground’, from which nothing grows despite the time and effort put into it. So many times they leave their service, disillusioned and bitter, not seeing that a few meters away, because their work on the barren lands created a little river of water that became a little river, life, perhaps not the one they were intending to create, comes to be.
It’s that attachment to what we want to give to the world that can help create that sense of disillusionment. If we go to serve humanity with the intention of performing a specific task, we are like a tall, proud, strong tree that breaks once the winds of adversity get too strong. And while the tree does provide a lot of shade while it is up, it doesn’t give as much anymore once it has broken.
But imagine if we were to be like tall grass in a large field; instead of resisting the winds of adversity, we let it flow about us, letting it move us at its will. Have you seen a field of grass during a storm? The sight of all the grass moving about in a seemingly choreographed dance is beautiful. And while each blade of grass alone might not feel like it is contributing a lot, the unity between them gives them the ‘power’ to awe just as much as that one big tree did.
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