Daily Cascade

Hope

Prompt: Hope
"The caterpillar feet were gone, the wings unfolded. One should never lose hope,"
Tomas Transtromer
Write about this in your Blog entry today.

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Are challenges ever inevitable? Good for you if you can hide from all the challenges that are thrown your way. I can't do that. What I can do, though, is hold on tight to a lifesaver, which is called hope.

Hope is our greatest and the best ally, no matter the circumstances. It is what makes life meaningful. It is the light that guides us through darkness. It is the strength that propels us forward. Hope is more than a feeling. It is a state of mind and our conscious belief that something good or at least more acceptable could arise from the difficulty at hand.

Why is hope so wonderful, then? It is wonderful and doable because the more I am hopeful, the more resilient I become. Hope inspires me to act and to seek solutions, however with small steps. Then, in doing so, it improves my mental health, and as a result I feel more connected to other people and I become more open to learning from our joint experiences, embracing change, and developing new skills or perspectives.

Have I done all that in the worst of situations? To tell the truth, NO! I always allow myself some grieving time, but during that time, my mind, by my urging or by its own rote and experience, finds some hope somewhere.

This is because hope is a source of inner strength and it keeps dreams alive, no matter how undoable. Better yet, hope lets me remember that I am human and what makes me human is (to me), creativity, empathy, and my capacity to dream of a better world. This way, I feel aligned with with uncertainties where hope helps me with a sense of direction and a belief in a few possible and positive outcomes.

To put it in a nutshell, there's always a way out. Thank you, HOPE!