You’ve got no choice.
Turn off the news. Go outside and take a deep breath. Do the one thing you know will bring a smile to your face. Forget your troubles for an hour.
Tag: hope
When To Give Up Hope
Hope is not something you and I were meant to hold on to until better times showed up. Hope isn’t the ultimate healer of all of our problems. Hope is a state of mind, a worldview, an attitude that transcends how we look back at the past and how we encounter the present. As you and I approach our unique futures, hope is not intended to be the automatic antidote for all things problematic.
Reaching, Always Reaching
“The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not disgrace to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim, is a sin.” (Benjamin Mays – 1894-1984)
I wasted a day yesterday and for the first time I can remember, I was, I am aware indeed that it was a wasted day.
The Last of the Human Freedoms
“The last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (Viktor Frankl 1905-1997).
One of the greatest freedoms we have is to read without fear. It is the freedom to learn, to grow, to experience the lives of others through the work of authors who offer us insight, inspiration, affirmation, and accountability.
We get to choose what we will read and what we will learn. Even when everything seems to be stripped away from us, it isn’t until we surrender our minds and our attitudes to others that we experience true defeat. Never give up hope and faith in the triumph of goodness. This is one of the messages I took away from reading Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
Hope, Dreams, Courage, Harmony
“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today, I still have a dream.” (Martin Luther King – 1929-1968)
I didn’t realize until I was looking up the dates that defined MLK’s life that he was only 39 years old when he died. That got me thinking back to when I was 39. How about you – what were your dreams when you were 39 and do you now have new dreams for your future? And if you are approaching 39, in what do you hope, what is your dream?
Two Roads – Hope and Despair
It has never been, and never will be, easy work! But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination. (Marian Zimmer Bradley, 1930-1999)
My favorite poem is The Road Not Taken written by Robert Frost. If you haven’t read this poem lately, why not take a look at it before finishing this post.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/44272
We do have choices to make and attitudes to wrestle with. Each day we have multiple opportunities to make choices between being a victim or being a survivor. Many of the choices we make, I have learned, depend on attitude, self-discipline, habit and character.
In Frost’s poem, once the traveler decides which path to choose, he/she must abandon the other path to another time. So choosing the path of despair or hope locks in your journey until the next time new journeys appear .
The companion you choose on the journey through the woods or fields is resolute in its guidance. It affects all that occurs while you walk down the path you’ve chosen. It affects all the senses.
In the 1950’s Pete Seeger wrote a song, Turn, Turn, Turn the words of which come from Ecclesiastes 3 found in the Holy Bible. In the 1960’s, the band The Byrds, re-recorded the song. The message of that song is there is a time and place for everything. There is a time for despair but a time to be filled with hope. There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.
You and I freely choose the paths we will follow. Whether we encounter despair or joy is of our own making. Clearly the path of despair brings less joy than the path of hope. Hang on to despair, grief, mourning for as long as you must, but always return to the path of hope. It brings happiness now, and well into the future.
There Is Hope For You
There is little hope in life without self-discipline, purpose, and intentionality/effort. The amount of hope we live into is in direct proportion to how committed we become to discipline, purpose, and effort in our lives. In living into these three conditions, we acknowledge some discomfort will come our way. That discomfort lessens as we become actively involved in living a life that is guided by a noble purpose.
Living with Hope Will Make You Worth Remembering
“Nothing’s so Sacred as Honor and Nothing’s So Loyal as Love.” Wyatt Earp (1848-1929)
How many people have lived and died since humankind first walked on earth? Why do we know the names and stories of some while others have slipped away unnoticed? Why isn’t every life remembered?
Continue reading “Living with Hope Will Make You Worth Remembering”
The Death of a Young Woman
“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” (Sir Winston Churchill)
A young woman I know lost her sister to suicide. There was no indication life had taken such a complete turnaround, a turnaround that was unbearable.
The family was crushed in their grief. Sorrow was their only companion.
Hope, Peace, a Good Night’s Sleep
“If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.”
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
I chose this particular quote because I am intrigued by the writer’s use of the plural form of the noun hope. So often hope is defined as a single concept. In fact, our lives are full of many hopes, hopes that comfort us when our hearts are breaking or hopes that sustain us even when our hearts and our bodies are just plain worn out from the struggles we experience in our daily living.