Hope Springs Eternal

I told you….I might actually get more than one blog entry out this year. Now, that is hope! A friend and I were chatting and the subject of hope came up, something she has been thinking about a lot lately. She had written the below, which I would really like to share as in many ways, it really does hit home. The politics aside…the important message is keep hope alive. We all talk about it…but do we really practice it? We are constantly bombarded with news items that are just shocking…how can the human race behave in such a way? And then, the media will try and balance it out with a human interest story and we all say “Awww….” And then we forward it on Facebook and YouTube and emails and tweets….and then promptly forget about it.

But how many of us actually have true hope? And what is hope?

So, I admit, this blog entry is the lazy man’s blog…in that I am not really the one that is writing it. I am merely the vessel this time for someone that really should PUBLISH HER OWN BLOG. Just saying…

“Hope” by KTP

"When finally forced to listen, they are unable to hear. I heard that on the radio the other day and it struck a chord. Later that week I heard it in a song. He said “We have the right to free speech, but we need to exercise our right to listen” There are so many people involved in protests to occupy Wall Street. That turned into people occupying EVERYWHERE. Yes, it’s a right, a right to assemble…with a permit.

A friend sent me a picture of “Occupy Norfolk”, it was two dirty hippies. Eventually the “weekend protesters” showed up to help the hippies with their cause. The permit expired and the city police had to come in and remove people. On the news I saw two cops in riot gear carrying a chick out of the park as she was singing some protest song, as if she was fighting for civil rights in the 60s. It rubbed me the wrong way.

I’m all for standing up for what you believe in and exercising your rights. However, I think there are more important things to stand up for and speak about, to lobby for and to find a solution for right now. That clip of the chick being carried out keeps running through my mind. It seems as if they are all lemmings. It could be a grass roots movement, but do they know what they are there for? Are they really occupied every day with what’s happening on Wall Street? Do they realize that climate change is happening, and fully understand the impact it will have on where we live? Do they think about cleaning up the waterways? Or helping the service men and women coming home, again, in our community? Or helping kids? Or improving health care? Or education? Or unemployment? Or violence and crime in our community? They are singing and chanting and making signs, but are they listening? Are they trying to make a change, or just bitching and showing their strange right to entitlement their generation, but more so the next generations, seem to have. I don’t get it.

And why is it like that? Has everything just been handed to everyone? Do parents just give in and give kids whatever they want? Is life too easy? Is it too hard? Do we try as much as we should? Do we work hard enough? Does a moral compass exist? Where is the compassion I use to see?

HOPE?

Is the world so messed up that we have given up? I know I feel like giving up on society. I feel that way most of the time.

My friend gives me hope. Hope for sunny days. Hope for the future. Hope for a change, a change for the better. Hope that I won’t have nightmares and night terrors for the rest of my life. Hope that I’ll be whole again. Hope that I’ll be strong someday. Hope when we find small pockets of kindness and compassion.

I have had to slim my search for hope down to noticing hope in very minute acts of kindness. Just in a simple action of someone holding the door open for another person entering or exiting a store. The fact they came out of their own little world for a moment to look behind them, pause, hold the door open for someone, and hearing that tiny response “thanks”. It’s dreadful how often that doesn’t happen. Or the simple text message I get from a friend every morning to simply to wish me a good day. That gives me a lot of hope.

I’m in no way perfect. I know I’m a screw up. I try to be good, good as I can be. I try to pay attention to what I do and say. I often do and say the wrong things. I try to fix what I break. I try to apologize, be honest, be kind, and have compassion…. I try.

I hear hope in children laughing. I see a glimpse of it when strangers say good morning. I saw hope in a friend’s tear-filled eyes as I hugged him and whispered in his ear “I got you”. I feel it when I skip rocks. I wish for it as I watch the sunrise on a new day.

I have lost hope, found it, set it on fire, lost it again. I feel so defeated. I’m starting my own grassroots movement, my own “occupy something”. I’m trying to find hope anywhere I can and spread it to one person at a time. Maybe they’ll hold the door open for the next person, and maybe others will do the same. Maybe people will stop seeing all the negativity and look for the positivity that is going on around them.

Stop and listen, there’s a revolution underway.”

I think she completely nails it. We can all hope for the big things and changes in life. But really, it’s the small things that matter the most. That is what real change and hope are built on. It’s like that TV commercial that is a “pay it forward” thing…it’s the little things that keep life and hope going. Could you imagine what would happen if we all did something, even something small and seemingly meaningless? But imagine if we ALL did that, what kind of impact would it have on the world in general?

So, what truly is hope? Is it wishful thinking? Is it an unwavering belief in something, anything? What does hope mean to you? Hope to me also means to believe. You HAVE to believe in something, even if you believe in nothing. Without faith, and I don't mean religion, but the belief in something, we really all are nothing.

And here is a thought. What if we all gave up on hope? What if we all said, "Oh well, it's never going to happen to me, so why bother?" Giving up on hope and faith and the belief in something good, is giving up on life. I picture the bleak, dreary, gray non-existence of a post apocalyptic world.

So, how does this all apply to me? I think her last paragraph really speaks to me. I feel so much like that….all part of the new ME. Sure, I can be mopey and woe-is me…but that gets you nowhere, and nowhere fast. I am looking for my own “occupy something”. Instead of forwarding cute little “aww” stories on Facebook…how about living and creating the “aww” stories? Make my own. I know it’s not Thanksgiving, because I am not lying on the coach, bloated with my pants unbuttoned trying to position myself so that I can even just breath because I am so freaking full…but maybe it’s time for the “What I Am Thankful For” Checklist. I don’t really want to list it out here now. Besides, what will I write about at Thanksgiving? But…I am thinking about it in my mind.

During our chat session, my friend also came out with this gem “….the other side of it. You have to see and appreciate the little things people do for you too…” That is so very true as well. Taking the time to stop thinking about me, me, me…and realizing and accepting what others do for me. How they are generating their own hope, and for me to really appreciate it and to let them know that I do.

So, seriously….this blog entry really was written by KTP. I am just a really good cut and paster. But, it’s a lot of food for thought.

So…finally, she also sent me a little poem thing (she was ON FIRE today!) which the last line I feel like I should get tattooed somewhere (no suggestions from the Peanut Gallery on where…but we know where it would fit….sigh….)

“Falling down is part of life…Getting back up is living” Word.

Ok, and before anyone’s knickers get in a twist….I think my next blogginess will be devoted to FRIENDS. (Not the TV show…although that would really be super cool. I had a dream once that Rachel and I were best friends and we were soooo cool!) But Friends in life. What are friends and what they mean to me. YOU will definitely know who YOU are….xoxox

Till Soon…

Kerri