Cultivating Hope

One definition of hope – which is also my definition – is going on when everything seems impossible. It is the belief in the future. Hope is necessary to life. It was said that, during Hitler's reign, his concentration camp victims who gave up hope either wound up in the electrified fence or were quickly dispatched by the Germans some other way. Despair took hold of these individuals, and the lack of hope killed them as much as the Nazis.

Why is hope so important? Despair – the opposite of hope – kills people when they're still alive. It nullifies hope. If you haven't got hope, you've got one step in the grave. So, you ask: Is hope really that important? YES. It is. You should always strive to have hope, even in the most mundane thing(s). And, above all, you need to have hope in yourself – again, even if in the smallest way. (Then you build on that, bit by bit until you believe in yourself. This is what believing in hope, in yourself, can empower you to do.)

However, I talk a good game; I don't always follow my own advice, at least not very well. I see myself, as my inner critic and voices both tell me, as "hopeless, useless, worthless, failure." The operative part for this blog entry of that nasty little phrase is "hopeless." I often feel despair, a lack of hope. And where does this get me? Just a downward spiral into the vast abyss of hopelessness – just what the Beast that is suicidality wants me to believe.

Some choose despair over hope. One of the reasons that people have no hope? Interestingly enough, if there's no hope, there is no height to fall from. In other words, if you have hope, you can experience despair, and for some, it is easier to live with despair than to have hope and fall into despair. For example, if I say, "I am worthless," and lie down on the ground, I protect myself from feeling despair. Does avoiding hope (not to mention courting despair) really protect you? Hardly. All it does is ensure that you are perennially unhappy. And that, my friend, is an awfully pessimistic world view – I would challenge you to embrace the possibility of hope, even with the risk of despair. Adopting the stance that there is safety in lying down, in adopting a self-limiting narrative, will get you nowhere – other than feeding the Beast.

Give yourself a break; promise me that much. You deserve it. You deserve to have hope – even in the face of possible despair. Just because you experience despair does NOT mean you will dwell in despair the rest of your life. Life, by definition, has its ups and downs – that is the raw truth. Life does not have to be all negativity and unhappiness; rather, life should be lived in the good times – and the bad because the good will come again.

If you don't have hope, ask someone to hold your hope for you. My therapist of twenty-plus years has held my hope many times over the years. It helped me to be held in her mind. It helped knowing she was holding onto something I couldn't conceive of at that juncture. So, if you can't hold your own hope, let someone borrow it, and remember, there is always hope.