Hope

I was recently challenged on my hope level, and my first reaction.. true reaction in myself.. was to say I’m good on hope. After all, I’ve been focusing on being happy within yourself and not seeking another as the source of it. After I said that of course, I looked at the words and analyzed (I ALWAYS am critical of my own words and positions) and thought.. happiness isn’t what she asked about, though. And, I put a pin in it and came back to reflect from time to time as I do. It’s been… educational.

First of all, hope isn’t happiness. Indeed… one of the things about hope that I noted in the past is that hope cannot exist without despair or the reverse. You need hope to feel lack.. and lack to want hope. Some philosophies put there (religions in the mind of some) would teach you to consider it all lost already.. then, you don’t feel sorrow from the absence. In a way, that’s a shortcut to happiness and one I’ve been comfortably using, lately.

I don’t know exactly when it creeped in, but it was somewhere along the path of the eye issues and especially as they proved quite fatal to my financial stability for a while. There was LITERALLY no way in the math for my budget to survive without having to close accounts abs have those permanent marks on credit and more. I drew solace from the fact that my immediate bills would be covered, and it did provide a GOOD understanding of what is really important. So, what will happen will happen, and I will save up a savings after to prevent a future crisis from ever happening. And, I can find PEACE and happiness in that knowledge. But, it is also a sorta surrender.

Then, that bled over into my social life. I was restricted from having one… basically.. except online. So, I focused on being happy within oneself and with your friends. Again… GOOD lessons and a good thing to understand. But, again, I was surrendering the idea of more. I’m just now close to being able to be social and yes… my debts and income and etc will impact my social life and definitely acceptability for things like romantic options. And… honestly it’s a good thing to be ok being single and with that life… but… if I get to comfortable with it or for that matter all this, I will not improve.

Oscar Wilde said, “ Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.” And, discontent isn’t a happy state. We can all improve, and that improvement requires us to first be a little … unhappy.. with our current state. So, we can rise up and change things. As usual my current playlist was already heading down this way of thinking over this week, and I’ll leave a link to it, here. It will take time. It will take courage. It will take discontent with our current state, even if we can be happy in the hope and progress. It will take stepping out of our comfort zone. It will take loving ourselves enough to stand on our own at times. And, it will take hope that we can… and will .. rise.