Hope is a choice. That\u2019s how I seeit. Viktor Frankl, neurologist, psychologist, and famously a concentration camp\u00a0survivor, said, \u201cLet us not fall prey to what we fear, but rather live into the\u00a0direction of hope.\u201d He attributes this sentiment to his method of survival. Duringthe three years of his imprisonment, he was moved to four different camps and in\u00a0each one, he observed that for the most part, survivors were people who had\u00a0found some hope for the future.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The above is an extreme example but\u00a0if Mr. Frankl could find it there, we can find it in the uncertainty of our\u00a0world today. Hope may not change outside circumstances, but it can change the\u00a0way we see things. The way we react. It can change our thinking and our ability
to embrace the current moment with optimism so we can lessen our suffering. It\u00a0can remind us that at any moment, life can shift in a multitude of ways that arelargely unforeseen. And it does. We just need to keep our hearts open and find\u00a0some patience.<\/p>\n
I see hope as a counterpoint to\u00a0despair which in many cases is a bad habit. We\u2019re so used to expecting the\u00a0worst, we start grieving it before it even gets here. My mother used to say to\u00a0me, \u201cDon\u2019t get your hopes up. You might get disappointed.\u201d Was disappointment
lethal? Did it make sense to avoid feeling good because I might feel badly in\u00a0the not too distant future? This is how I was programmed and I continue to do deep\u00a0work to turn that around.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t an easy thing to do. When I\u00a0feel discouraged and lost in grief, optimism doesn\u2019t just land in my lap. I have\u00a0to name how I feel, stand back for a moment and search for a different way to\u00a0look at life. I don\u2019t do this to be seen as spiritual. I don\u2019t do this so\u00a0people will like me. I choose hope because it makes me feel better.<\/p>\n
Some months back, I told a friend\u00a0that I was feeling hopeless about the political situation in our country. She reminded\u00a0me that everything changes and not to abandon myself. I followed her
suggestion. I stopped imagining the worst. I chose a more expansive way of looking at my world. \u201cChoose\u201d being the operative word. I kept reminding myself\u00a0that anything is possible \u00a0\u2013 and something did, unexpectedly and dramatically.<\/p>\n
Alice in Wonderland who fell down\u00a0the rabbit hole into an unfamiliar and backward world said to herself, \u201cThere\u2019s\u00a0no use trying. One simply can\u2019t believe in impossible things.\u201d But before she found
her way back home, she had learned to believe in the extraordinary and embrace\u00a0the fantastical. I\u2019m not suggesting that having a positive outlook means that\u00a0everything will turn out well or that hoping will make it so. What I am\u00a0suggesting is that when we give up the illusion that our life will unfold\u00a0exactly the way we want it to, if we dare to imagine a kinder future without\u00a0being rigid about it, we can find some peace in the moment, no matter what\u2019s\u00a0happening. Why waste precious time imagining the worst when you can hope for
positive changes that you can\u2019t see yet?<\/p>\n
One of the few things that never\u00a0changes, is the fact that everything changes. It sounds like a contradiction in\u00a0terms but it isn\u2019t. The pendulum continues to swing and with a little patience,
hopelessness can turn into hope. Fear can turn into courage. Anger can turn\u00a0into compassion.<\/p>\n
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, \u201cWe\u00a0must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.\u201d That sounds\u00a0like a tall order but if we allow ourselves to dream, we can find a way to
detach from unhealthy delusions and accept the possibility of a desired\u00a0reality. We can see our situation, good or bad, as a stepping stone to improve\u00a0our lives and calm our nerves.<\/p>\n
In Greek mythology, the first woman\u00a0on earth was Pandora. The myth goes that the god Zeuss gave her a box and\u00a0admonished her not to open it. She tried to obey but her curiosity got the\u00a0better of her. She opened the box and all manner of evils and miseries were
unleashed into the world. When she realized what was escaping, she quickly closed\u00a0the box and the only thing left was hope.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One interpretation is that the\u00a0evils that Pandora let loose represent the obstacles and difficulties in our\u00a0lives today, while hope represents the optimism and resilience required to cope\u00a0with and overcome these challenges. In the philosophy of Buddhism, when \u201chope\u201d is\u00a0directed toward a specific result, it can open us up to suffering. But when it\u2019s\u00a0not attached to a particular outcome and we see it as an attitude, it can offer\u00a0us a way to find compassion for others and ourselves.<\/p>\n
In my case, hope helps me stop\u00a0telling myself scary stories. It not only lightens my soul. It not only frees me\u00a0from despair. It also sparks my imagination. It shows me the light in the\u00a0darkness. It shows me openings where I thought there were none. When my writing\u00a0students read their pieces out loud, I point out areas where they left gaps\u00a0that are asking to be filled in, places in the narrative where they could crack\u00a0open the armor, go deeper and see the secrets that they\u2019ve been protecting. And\u00a0they do.<\/p>\n
Leonard Cohen wrote,<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a crack, a crack in\u00a0everything. \\<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how the light gets in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hope is a choice. That\u2019s how I seeit. Viktor Frankl, neurologist, psychologist, and famously a concentration camp\u00a0survivor, said, \u201cLet us not fall prey to what we fear, but rather live into the\u00a0direction of hope.\u201d He attributes this sentiment to his method of survival. Duringthe three years of his imprisonment, he was moved to four different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2523,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions\/2523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}