I have always been a firm believer in the power of hope. No matter how many lemons life throws at you, you should make as much lemonade as you can. It may sound cliché, but when you relate it to life, it feels deeply true.
Whenever life takes an unexpected turn, the first thing many of us lose is hope. We begin to believe that nothing good can come from what has happened. But I don’t think that’s the right way to look at life. Hope is what keeps us moving. It is the quiet force that reminds us there is still a tomorrow worth waiting for.
Advertisement
Recently, I watched ‘Voicemails for Isabelle’, and one particular line stayed with me was – “ Sometimes life rings a bell in our favour” To truly understand the weight of those words, you have to watch the film. But here’s what I took away from it.
Advertisement
Jill loses her sister, Isabel, to an illness. From that moment, her life changes forever. A void forms within her, a void that no one can ever truly fill. That’s what grief does. When someone who holds a special place in our life leaves us, whether through death or any other form of loss, our hearts ache in a way that words can barely describe.
Have you ever come across the phrase “a distraught heart”? I once read it somewhere, and whether it’s an established term or simply a beautiful way of describing grief, it has stayed with me ever since.
To me, a distraught heart is what happens when someone cannot fully accept the absence of a person they deeply loved. You still find yourself talking to them. You still feel their presence in quiet moments. Even though they are no longer physically with you, their soul seems to remain by your side, perhaps for years, or maybe forever.
I don’t think that’s a weakness. In fact, I think it’s one of the purest expressions of love. When you have loved someone with all your heart, a part of them continues to live within you. Their absence hurts, but their presence never completely fades.
Also Read: In the rhythm of Kopai: A journey through Tagore’s Santiniketan
Maybe that’s what we all long for, to love someone so deeply that even after they’re gone, the bond refuses to disappear. Not because we cannot move on, but because some connections are simply too profound to be measured by physical presence alone.
The same happens with Jill. She knows Isabel isn’t coming back, yet whenever life overwhelms her, she calls her sister’s old number and leaves a voicemail. What she doesn’t know is that Isabel’s number has been assigned to someone else. And, that’s where her life takes a turn with a pinch of magic and little bit of hope. In a different corner of a different city, a guy named Wes receives all her voicemails.
He carries wounds of his own, and perhaps that is why he understands Jill in a way no one else can. Two strangers, connected by grief, find each other through something as ordinary as a phone number.
Sometimes life can be magical in the most unexpected ways. For Jill and Wes, meeting each other was nothing short of that. Maybe Isabel, in some unseen way, was the force behind this beautiful coincidence. Or maybe it wasn’t magic at all. Maybe it was simply life finding a way to lead two broken people toward healing.
The truth is, grief never completely disappears. The pain doesn’t vanish; we simply learn to carry it. With time, with a few small miracles, and with people who choose to stay, life slowly begins to move again.
Hope arrives quietly, often disguised as a person or a moment we never expected.
For Jill, that hope is Wes. He understands her trauma, yet never gives up on her.
Together, they navigate their pain, nurture each other’s healing, and discover that moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting.
For Wes, Jill becomes the calm he never knew he needed but always had the longing for. She doesn’t erase his past, but she helps him see that grief and love can exist together.
And perhaps that’s what hope really is. Hope doesn’t promise a life free from pain. It doesn’t erase loss or rewrite the past. Instead, it gives us the courage to keep going despite everything. It reminds us that even after our darkest days, life still has a way of surprising us.
Sometimes, hope arrives as a voicemail. Sometimes, it arrives as a stranger. And sometimes, it simply arrives when we’ve almost stopped looking for it.
Advertisement
