Photo Credit - Rostislav Kralik - Public Domain Pictures
Before I get started I would like to apologize for the long
wait between this and my last post. I was having some computer issues which
prevented me from being able to write. However, that said, it lends me the
opportunity to share with you now my perspective on hope. Yes, it’s a strange
segue but I think when I’m done you’ll see how it all fits together.
For the most part, in my little piece of the world, my life
goes on undisturbed from day to day. I have, at times, had major life issues of
course, but on a daily basis my biggest worries are usually things of a more
mundane nature. Sometimes I worry about paying the bills, this past week I
worried about getting my computer up and running again. What does this have to
do with hope you may ask? I’m getting to that.
First, let me tell you what happened when my computer started
giving me issues. You may find this hard to believe but it’s true. After the initial,
“Well, this sucks!” I thought to myself, “I guess all in all I’m pretty lucky.
I could be dealing with a much worse situation. There are people throughout the
world fighting each day just to survive and my biggest worry today is if I can
get my computer working again.” Do you see where I’m going here? Sure, my life
could be worse but that’s not really it. There’s so much more than just, it
could be worse. It’s about how the people who are having it worse continue on,
how they find the strength to keep going, how they can grasp onto the tiny bits
of hope and pull themselves up; and also, how I (we), who has (have) much less
to worry about can learn and in turn share back the hope to those people who
gave it to me (us) in the first place.
I’d like to share a bit with you about the days following my
daughter’s death. I’m not ready, yet, to go into the depths of my feelings and
thoughts on the subject but something happened when she died that you should
know about.
As a recovering alcoholic I know all too well that the death
of a loved one could easily lead to a relapse, even for a veteran of 21 years
now. Because I know this and even though I didn’t feel like I wanted a drink, I
knew I had to get myself to a meeting. Now, prior to this, I hadn’t been to a
meeting in a good long time. I had moved to a new city and never bothered to
check out where any meetings were even held. Needless to say, I was downtrodden
enough and not really in a state of mind to go looking up local meetings. Here’s
where the universe comes in....I know because this sort of thing happens to me
often...if you strive to live your life in tune with the energies around you,
life will find a way of giving you what you need. Getting back to the AA
meetings...I’m trying to comprehend that my baby, my youngest daughter, has
passed away but the rent still has to be paid...so, I walk over to the church,
where I’m renting from, to pay the rent and on the front door of the place
there’s a little ol’ sign, “Tonight’s 7:00 PM AA meeting has been moved to room XXX.”
I kid you not. So at 7:00 I went to the meeting without knowing what type of
meeting it would be. Some are quite large with one or two people sharing their
experience, other’s are smaller and more intimate. This one, as it turns out,
was the latter. I walked into a group of about 7 or 8 people who listened to me
introduce myself and then put the entire itinerary on hold for the night so
that they could listen to me and so they could assure me that they were there
for me and they cared.
I don’t know if you see the connection here to hope, yet,
but for me it’s like this. That little sign on the door gave me a spark of hope
during the darkest days of my life. The people that were there for me gave me
the confidence to go on and the hope that someday light would return to my
life. It’s in these small things that I find the largest gifts and I can’t help
but feel that I’m not the only one in this world who understands that.
When I hear about or read the news and see such awful things
happening in the world, people in the Ukraine and Russia, the Middle East, and
Africa living with the daily horrors of war. Others dealing with illness,
famine, natural disasters, everywhere I look I see what could be seen as
hopelessness, but I don’t. Instead I see hope. I see that despite the most horrendous
difficulties and the highest obstacles people continue to move forward, they trudge
on and I believe they do this because they have hope. Somewhere inside them
they find that same little spark and believe it’s going to get better so they
keep going and in the process they set an example, an example of hope for the
next person who is struggling through what could be a hopeless situation. It’s
hope that has allowed the human race to persevere. It’s hope that motivates
each and every one of us to get up and get on with our day, our lives, and our
dreams of a better life.
Human beings are a remarkable species and our ability to
hold on to hope is one of the reasons why. I can survive the death of my
daughter because I have hope that maybe, just maybe, one day joy will return to
me, I hope that I can give her son a vivid, lasting image of her, and that even
though we have to go on without her, life can still be good. Our species
thrives on this type of hope. When we see it in others we are inspired to hang
on to our hope and a beautiful circle of hope and light is created and carries onward
throughout the existence of the human animal.
So there it is, one strange little incident that began with
a computer malfunction that blossomed into an entire contemplative experience.
If you’re reading this then my hope for you is that you find within yourself
the hope you need at this moment in your life. Know that somewhere out in this
large world you have an ally who is hoping to pass the spark along to you and
hoping that you, in turn, will keep that spark alive by passing it on to
someone else. In these troubled times be of good cheer and hope for a better
tomorrow. And remember that even in the smallest incidents hope can live large.
