Street Seens: Finding Hope in a “Where’s Waldo?” World

It was a strange combination of events and emotions that set up a path that got me thinking of the funny little puzzle picture known as “Where’s Waldo?” That thought morphed into a sort of silent “Yippee” and a sense that Waldo might just be a face of hope in the jumble of less than hopeful news.

The challenge (and success) of finding Waldo, a funny looking little guy, in a drawing crowded with a sea of wildly varied and often indistinguishable people, shapes, and figures could beget a cry of discovery named “Here’s Waldo, and he’s a hero of hope!”

Here’s how it happened to me. 

In a period when a lot has been made of racing at breakneck speed to keep promises that never seemed to mean what I was told they should mean, I started looking for the HUGE and promised improvements to infrastructure.  A walk along the crowded sidewalks of any urban village or a ride on any of the trains that radiate from its hubs and bridges and tunnels that connect its arteries will set you thinking of those promises as it did me. The Pollyanna in me urged me to look further to find reasons for hope and to take “Where’s Waldo?” as my guide. 

Amazed, I discovered, there really is a Waldo of massive infrastructure achievements. But he’s in China where high speed rail, environmentally kind energy, and all those good things are happening, courtesy of China’s windfall of funds.  A shame that has to come from interest payments the U.S. is investing to deliver its “big, beautiful Christmas gift of tax cuts” to finance a new look in lofty deficits.  But at least Waldo is there to remind us of what’s possible. Promises can be kept. 

It’s harder to find Waldo in what we knew as the national parks and lands. If it is decided that what is decreed can be “undecreed” for profit, folks who get to buy those lands to drill and frack and generally ravage will have gotten them for peanuts.  Maybe Waldo is behind the plows that are clearing the land to find coal.  I’ll keep looking.

And speaking of peanuts, I’ll interrupt the search for Waldo to stop and visit with the peanut farmer I encountered in videos that made me want to find and console him. He was so like the honest men of the land I knew and admired as a child in the farm country of Illinois.  I wanted to read him the part from prophets and psalmist these days about how God embraces and promises to extend care to heal the brokenhearted. 

The farmer was at a rally to tell folks about his 23-year-old daughter who had committed suicide when “the Judge” declared her a pervert and abomination because she was gay.  The dear, brokenhearted man reminded the folks to whom he was speaking that he himself had said negative things about being gay, but that he was wrong to have done that and so sorry.  But the thing that tore at my heart strings was that he kept saying, “She wasn’t a ‘prevert.’” (Although his sign showed the correct spelling in a quote from “the Judge.”) For me, the poignancy of it was that that word was not even in the vocabulary of such an honest and big-hearted parent.  “Watch out, Waldo,” I thought. “Words are flying that can wound when used as weapons.”  So, take cover.

Guess where I did find Waldo.  At an oral surgeon’s office near Fifth Avenue.  It looked for all the world like a hopeful sign since it demonstrated that some healers are finding ways to work around the landmines being planted in the terrain of healthcare.  I’ve learned never to underestimate the glories of the gifted professionals who don’t let the restrictions of uncertainty close their ears to the words they uttered in taking an oath first to do no harm. 

Before my eyes I saw the Waldo of hope take shape in the form of three different kinds of dental professionals who worked together to help me find a path that showed a brother and sisterhood of Waldos conferring on the best way to treat a patient, optimize the health insurance she had to offer and never compromise their individually high standards.  A very handsome Waldo indeed. 

And the versatile figure was not emerging from a sea of concern and confusion for the first time.  In a deluge of closed or closing doors there are still those remarkable doctors and dentists who find ways to show the Waldo face of hope.  I know. I’ve seen their compassionate faces and recognized in them reasons to look to the future optimistically. One said that the one irreplaceable quality to seek in a staff member is kindness.  The rest can be learned, but that quality cannot be implanted when missing.  The others lived that mantra, with or without verbalizing it.

So, where I experienced only the confused images of the profit motive as the standard for governing, I got some renewed hope this week, that common sense and kindness may prevail and that a determined Waldo will emerge in the midst of a confusing sea of stick figures.