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We all have hope.
Sometimes, oddly enough, we don't want to admit it--to others or to
ourselves--but no matter how bad things get in our lives,
we have hope. It's one of the greatest gifts that we've
been given, for out of hope come all of our scientific
and medical advances -- why even start trying something new
if there's no hope for a successful outcome? Hope is what
keeps us going on those dark, dark nights in our lives
when it seems as if the sun never again will shine, but
we have to give hope its due; we have to let its light
shine in our lives if it's to do any good. We have to
tell ourselves that things will get better, that life
will radiate its beauty in our lives once more, if we but
let it.
Hope never dies in us, yet often we cover
its light, or we cover our ears so that we won't hear it
sing its song. But that's like turning off a lamp when we
most need its light, or shutting the door on a best
friend when we most need company. We were created to be
hopeful creatures, to look at the possibilities in the
world and in ourselves, yet many of us aren't willing to
do so, and we deny that there's even hope in the world,
and once we deny the existence of hope, we start living
dull, lightless lives that serve no one -- ourselves or
those who surround us. To live is to hope, and to hope is
to live.
Personally,
I remember that even during my darkest depressions, I've
always felt the flame of hope, no matter how tiny it seemed to
be. The problem was that all of the negative thoughts
that were my depression kept arguing against the hope, calling
it stupid, telling me that it was unrealistic and
unjustified. The hope inside of me was like the one
person who is willing to stand up with a voice of reason
against a mob, only to be attacked by that mob and left for
dead. Thankfully, it didn't die, or I might have.
When the
voice of hope speaks inside of you, listen closely. The
voice of hope is the voice of God, the voice of all the
wonderful people with whom we share this world, the voice of
truth and reality. It's those other voices inside of
you, the voices of despair and condemnation and hopelessness,
that are the liars. Call them what they are, and give
them no credence. It's hope that springs eternal.
These other things are temporary parts of ourselves that we
have to learn to reject, like someone renting our house who
not only isn't paying their rent, but who's destroying the
house. To restore peace and equilibrium, we have to get
rid of the renter and restore the hope of better days to come.
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