Welcome to another Bagpipe Monday on One Foot Down! Friends, we are essentially in a bye week, as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish open the season against the Michigan Wolverines in 12 days. Are you ready — are you REALLY ready for the season?

With the season so close, and with so little contact left with Brian Kelly and the team, I started wondering what fans really thought about what’s about to go down over the next 3 months. Are you hopeful? Why are you hopeful? Do you have a sense of dread? Why do you think you feel that way?

Something strange about me, is that I reduced my listening to music quite a bit over the years. Instead, I put on a show or movie to play in the background when I’m cleaning, writing, or doing whatever. It’s a strong cycle of about 9 or 10 different series and about 20 different movies. For example, I’d bet that I’ve “watched” all 7 seasons of the West Wing about 30 times (seriously).

One of the reasons I’ve done this (which I’m taking a guess at because it started out unintentionally) is that many of these shows and movies provide a sense of hope. It’s a nice feeling to have in your life. Hope gives meaning to the mundane, and direction for the lost. The themes, characters, and plots of these shows and movies all have that one thing in common... hope. (Only took me a few years to figure that all out).

So forget all of those previous questions, because they are all invalid if you’re paying attention. You have hope. It may be on a different level than others, but regardless of what details you place that hope in — it’s there.

So what are you hopeful for during Notre Dame’s 2018 season? Please share below. (It doesn’t have to be as corny as this post. If your main hope is that Jim Harbaugh gets his ass handed to him in awesome and humiliating fashion, I am totally down with that).

Rather than provide a cold poll this week (or actual bagpipes), I leave you with a quote and a hymn.

Come on now all you young men, all over the world. You are needed more than ever now to fill the gap of a generation shorn by the war. You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in Life’s fighting line. Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don’t be content with things as they are. ‘The earth is yours and the fulness thereof.’ Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities. Raise the glorious flags again, advance them upon the new enemies, who constantly gather upon the front of the human army, and have only to be assaulted to be overthrown. Don’t take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations. - Winston Churchill