Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
OK, OK, I’ll admit that my political posting has gotten a little out of hand lately…
but, sometimes, I just can’t seem to resist.
This blog, however, is NOT supposed to be political, so I delightfully digress.
Today, a lighter (well perhaps) subject…
HOPE.
What is hope?
Or, better, where is hope?
Outcome Based Hope
You know the kind…the sort that hopes for…
a better job…
a bigger paycheck…
a sexy set of six-pack abs…
a kid that doesn’t grow up to be an axe-murderer…
an accolade…
a better attitude…
or simply an attaboy.
This is a very common form of hope in our day-to-day life experience.
Lately I’ve been in a severe sales slump. It seems no one wants to come to Costa Rica these days…or, at least, not via a Costa Rica Guy designed and autographed vacation. So, my hope everyday seems to be in just making a damn sale!
It’s been a very frustrating form of hope for me.
I believe outcome based hope, more often than not, does just that…frustrate the hell out of us.
But there’s nothing wrong with this form of hope…it comes natural.
I’ve heard it said that it’s better to harbor an expectation of the outcome you seek, than it is to hope for it. But the distinction to me seems largely semantical.
Transcendent Hope
This is the sort of hope that shows up along with faith and love…the hope for a better life to come. A hope that transcends our current dirt and flesh-bound situation and yearns for something eternally better.
A hope that yearns for those streets paved with gold.
I do have a problem with this hope. It seems to me to take one’s attention off the realm where actual impact can take place…the here and now.
How can this world be made better if my hopeful gaze is always on the one to come?
And will it ever, really?
But that type of hope is, admittedly, hard to maintain in the face of a constant onslaught against it.
It seems that everyday we are given a multitude of reasons to lose it…hope, that is.
So, it’s no wonder that a transcendent form of hope is very appealing to us.
Inspirational Hope
I watched a movie last night via Netflix called Hotel Rwanda. It was set during the horrible Rwanda genocide of 1994.
You know, in 1994 I was 34 years old and practicing law. I was pretty in tune with the news of the day and I don’t remember anything about the Rwanda genocide. It seems that we in the west collectively turned our backs to it and that fact was made obvious in the film.
In the space of 100 days, almost 1,000,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were massacred. It was one of the greatest tragedies of modern human history and most of the world barely batted an eye…
perhaps due to being caught up in outcome based or transcendent hope.
The main character was the manager of a swanky hotel that ended up as a refugee camp for some 1,000 Tutsis desperately trying to escape the Hutu machetes.
The actions of this courageous man, based on the real-life character of Paul Rusesabagina, who, even though he was a Hutu, saw no difference between himself and his Tutsi brothers and sisters (including his own wife), was inspiring to me.
I love to be inspired.
You see, inspiration is the spark that I often need for a more resilient and moving form of hope…
the hope for a better version of me.
Sometimes it’s just waiting for the inspiration to be realized.
It’s a good practice each day to awake with that kind of hope. The hope that this day I will be inspired to impact.
And in doing so, I might inspire someone else to do that as well…
Inspirational Impact Mindfulness, as I like to call it.
That’s what can really make this world a better place.
Now, there’s something to hope for!
image credit: Maria Ronngren via Compfight cc
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