The Audacity of Hope

Hope is mentioned 121 and 159 times respectively in the KJV and NIV of the Bible. So it's sound to say that we need hope in our lives; it's key. Wikipedia defines hope as a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. To hope is to wish for something with the expectation of the wish being fulfilled, a key condition in unrequited love. That last part "unrequited love" is what brings me here.

I've hoped for one thing in particular for more than a year. I hoped that today would be the day. Okay, wait, it's going to be today. Well, today was a bad day, so tomorrow definitely will be the day. The love of a certain man. I hoped the love of my life would become the love of his life. We hope because it's something to hold on to. It makes us feel good in a world of intangibles because at least we can say we own that. No one can tell you what to hope for, when to stop, or stop at all. Well yesterday, I stopped. I'd hoped that more would come from a certain conversation and it didn't. Or did it? The absence of words, in this instance, was hope dying. Hope has a way of letting us down in ways nothing else can because we can't control the downward spiral from that ivory tower as we could traveling up it. The disappointment is as drastically self imposed as the original feeling.

I entitled this posting as I did, which we should all be familar with as a best selling published title because on the plus side, hope is multidimensional and has nerve. As it may seemingly fail us in one area, its value placed in something else will serve us stronger, longer and with greater fulfillment, even if momentarily unseen. We are allowed to move that emotion from one place to another, contain it, give it permission to lay dormant or spread it as far and wide as our dreams are long.

Although my hopes did not come to fruition in this instance, they will in another. I choose to move them; watch them settle into my soul, find a home in my smile and live in my heart. My dreams are beyond the sky and my hopes are along the way...the audacity...

~A~