They say, “Hope springs eternal.” For some it does. For some hope seems a way of life, a way of being, a part of who they are. For others, finding hope for the future takes effort or even real work.
Today, as the United States of America and the rest of the world watched, the man who said he had “the audacity to hope,” Barak Obama was sworn into office as the 44th president. He has the ability to instill hope in the people of America – at least in many people, if not all. You could see it in the faces of the people there on the mall watching in the cold. You cold see it in the faces of the people all around the country as the news stations showed them, too, watching as the first African American president took office.
I think of myself as a hopeful person. I think positively. I believe I create my reality and my future with my thoughts and with my actions, but even I fall prey to my own discouragement, my own disillusionment, my own despair at times. I get stuck.
Then someone or something picks me up and gives me a reason to hope, shows me that hope can, indeed, spring eternally if I allow it.
Today, I watched the inauguration. That gave me hope. Then, I got the second email from one of my blog readers who says my writing inspires and helps him. He told me that I make a difference in his life. In fact, one of my blogs not only affected a life choice he made but continues to serve as a motivational “mantra,” as he put it, on an almost daily basis. As I try, and try again to put my work out there and to get a book published (mostly to find myself faced with rejection), as I try to offer classes and teleseminars (sometimes that don’t fill), this man gave me hope. He gave me a reason to continue doing what I believe in.
What gives you hope? And to whom can you give hope?
Did Obama’s speech today give you hope for the future of America or for world peace, economic stability or environmental consciousness? Did it give you hope that you, too, could achieve your dreams and succeed at your goals. (Let me say it for him: Yes, you can.) Did it give you hope that you, your situation, this country, the world can change? (Yes, you can.)
Despair serves no one. It doesn’t get you up on your feet and moving towards your goals. It doesn’t make you want to change or to create change.
Hope does those things. Hope accomplishes more in a minute than despair an imagine in a lifetime.
So, today, find hope. Listen to Barak Obama’s inaugural speech or the speech he gave when he was elected. Listen to an Oprah Winfrey show. Read an inspirational book. Download some self-help or human potential mp3s into your Ipod and listen to them as you drive, walk or run. Go to an religious service.
Do whatever it takes to get out of despair and to allow hope to spring up within you. Let it seep into your life like a small break in the dam. Before you know it, the hope will rush into your life with all the power of the water held back by the wall it eroded away. Then let the hope flow…eternally.
