It is said that a person can live without food for 30-50 days.
Without water for 3 or 4 days.
But without hope they can’t.
There’s different kinds of hope.
The main hope we mostly think about is this hope:
The hope we have similar to wishing on a star, or hoping to win the lottery.
There’s the hope of a better tomorrow, a great future.
The hope that our best days are yet to come.
The hope for health and love and a long life.
And this hope that our best days are not behind us.
Almost an ego-based hope.
I find some of these kinds of hope somewhat of a useless emotion (yes, you heard me correctly) & honestly, many times, a waste of time, like wishing on a fairy-godmother. (Useless, I say, when the hopes are not followed up with actions or planning, but I digress.)
The second type of hope I would say is this deep rooted hope within each of us.
Hope that we are here for a purpose.
Hope that we are significant in some way in the grand scheme of things.
Hope is a rather fascinating emotion to dissect.
I think HOPE is an essential emotion to feel (even the fairy-godmother type), and part of our hard-wiring.
Without it – why would one want to continue on in this life? What would be the point? I really do think people die from having no hope.
Living without hope is a dreadful way to exist and not just for you, for those surrounding you.
I also think people live way longer than they were “supposed to” from all kinds of HOPE.
Hope is probably one of the most powerful emotions I would wager, next to love of course.
I also think it’s the reason why.
The reason why people do or don’t do things.
The motivating factor behind it all, behind LIFE as a human with a prefrontal cortex that can translate the energy of feelings throughout our whole body.
The hope for a better life.
So, today I send you this message of hope my dear friend.
I’m always blessed by the people who kept holding on to hope no matter what their age. (This stuff totally jazzes me up and gives me hope! {Can one still use the word ‘jazzes me up’ without sounding totally 1980s-Richard-Simmons?!?!})
For you who feel like nothing is working out, don’t forget about:
- Harland Sanders was 62 when he franchised KFC
- Julia Child landed her TV show at 51, wrote her first cookbook at 49
- Judi Dench starred in her first film after the age of 60
- Ernestine Shepard is a 80-year-old body builder, she started at age 56
- Picasso painted his masterpiece “Guernica” at age 55
- J.R.R. Tolkien published his first volume of “Lord of The Rings” at 62
- At age 69, Ed Whitlock from Ontario became the oldest person to run a marathon in under 3 hours
- At 100, Frank Schearer was water skiing! (Dad, there’s hope for you wake surfing!)
Hope that the best is yet to come.
Hope for a better tomorrow.
What happens when hope fades? Dreams fade?
What do we do when our hope fades?
This is a crazy important question.
Because without hope we sure can’t have faith.
Faith requires confidence for what we hope will happen.
When you are without faith and hope, how much do you think you will love life, yourself, anyone else?
Empty.
Probably won’t be spring out of bed in the morning.
You are now living a miserable existence without hope.
Living without hope makes all the fruits of the spirit practically impossible!
Think about that!
I know I hope for patience!
We hope for the kindness, goodness, faithfulness –
the love, joy, peace –
gentleness & self-control in our lives and from others.
So, back to what do we do when our hope fades?
Start with Gratitude.
Start with one simple thing you are grateful for.
It could be the fact you are breathing.
It could be that you have a log to sit on.
Sometimes we are so doubtful that things will look up that we forget what’s right in front of us.
It’s about making the micro-teeny-tiny shifts, planting the teeny-tiny seeds that will turn into full-blown hope.
Gratitude and Thanksgiving have to come first.
But then, this.
Plugging your hope in.
What?
The thing is this.
Most of us have our hope tied up in our situations, circumstantially.
This is the wrong place to anchor your hope. The wrong place to plug it in.
It’s like large fries or drunk sex, good for a minute.
Putting your hope in your job, your family, other people, things or society – will ALWAYS leave you frustrated.
That wasn’t how this HOPE thing was designed.
Hoping on the fairy-godmother things, as I alluded to earlier, will leave you, flee from you – those things, including all the people around you will forsake you.
It’s a guarantee.
It’s not a bad thing, it’s just how the system was designed.
You see we were never designed to place our hope outside of ourselves.
It was always designed to be a you and God thing or you connected to that all purposeful, all knowing, all powerful source you intuitively know is there – whatever you coin it.
The place where hope was originally conceived.
The place where hope never fades, and never dies.
Hope is the great calling in our lives:
to be plugged in to our never ending source of hope.
Love and service become fruitless without hope that they will bear fruit. (Although, I will say love can exist without hope, but isn’t it the hope that love will be received? As for serving and helping, why would one do such activities without the hope that a difference is being made? Chances are you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t love or serve without hope.)
Hope is the basis for all business.
The basis for all financial trading.
The basis for progress.
The basis for all products & services.
But it can’t originate from those items.
It’s tricked so many of us, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Lack of hope is the reason for so much suffering in our lives.
The magic of igniting another to find their hope is in fact hope all unto its own.
To add to the great Alexander Pope who first coined “Hope Springs Eternal”:
Hope Springs Eternal Internal.
Find your hope.
Finding your hope makes you a natural spreader of hope.
Nothing else required.
It just kinda oozes out of you.
Live Your Legacy.
xx Lisa
