And Then There's Hope...

"Back when I had a little,
I thought that I needed a lot.
A little was overrated;
But a lot was a little too complicated.
You see, zero didn't satisfy me;
A million didn't make me happy.
That's when I learned a lesson:
That it's all about your perception,
Hey, are you a pauper or a superstar?
So you act, so you feel, so you are.
It ain't about the size of your car,
It's about the size of the faith in your heart..."
~ "There's Hope" by India Arie

The dictionary describes hope as "the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best." Hope is what many have said "springs eternal" and is "everlasting." Clichés aside, the spirit of hope can't fully be described. Its essence is so necessary, but in many ways it is indefinable. Sometimes hope rests in the intake of breath or the bat of an eye. Or hope comes in written word or a musical note. At other times, hope rests in a hug or a first kiss or...

Too many of us get caught up in the rigor of our daily lives and we sacrifice a bit of our hopefulness for a cautious "wait and see" attitude. We don't want to give in to our inner selves where hope resides. That little tingle of anticipation, of having, of needing, of visualizing--that's hope. Hope signals the possibility of what is to come, where dreams and plans intersect.

In so many ways, we have lost the ability to be hopeful. As we grow and mature, we might equate hope with an unnecessary use of energy: "I don't want to hope; I'd rather see how things turn out." But why? Hope is an essential life skill; in order to get to the next level of your life, you have to plan, you have to implement and guess what? You have to hope. In the beginning, there is hope, sometimes mistaken as want or desire. In the first moments, before you know, you hope.