Hope is a tiny word but it carries big ideas – expectation, optimism, aspirations, plans, dreams, wishes, good outcomes – to name but a few.
We are all hoping that our world will come back to us resembling how it once was before Covid 19 hit us like a giant meteorite from space.
Doing this post for #huntforhope the first thing I thought of was a few lines I remembered from my school-days English classes:
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast
Man never is, but always to be blest
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home
Rests and expatiates in a life to come”
(Alexander Pope – 18th century poet and satirist – from An Essay on Man)
I like it as it alludes to the possibility of hope being an integral part of the human condition; that all we have to do is tap into something that is already a part of us to become hopeful; to be optimistic, even though things have become bad, sad, tragic and seemingly hopeless, that all will be well soon.
Another saying, ‘the only thing we can rely on is change’, is one that, however scary, can be positive, optimistic and hopeful too.
If we truly internalise that change is a constant, add this to our internal spring of hope, we have a winning formula to get us through even the most terrible and darkest of times.
I think we can feel hopeful if we hold onto these concepts, even as we live in a world gone mad, but one that is recovering.
So what I am doing, to try to unearth this well of human hope within me, is adding this almost-forgotten piece of an old poem, which I thought I would never, ever find relevant to my life (like a lot of things I studied in school – think trigonometry…!) to other affirmations I use to keep me uplifted.
This is starting to remind me of another natural, oft-buried, talent we all have –human resilience; the power to bounce back in the face of adversity – if I am feeling particularly Covid-jaded.
The vaccines are more than a hope now, they are a reality; the return to life as we knew it is just up ahead; this too really will pass
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