Hope

Hope. Like all things good and bad we humans have been able to concoct our own version of how it came about. Hope was personified in Greek mythology as Elpis. When Pandora opened the Forbidden Box she let out all the evils except one: HOPE. Apparently, the Greeks considered hope to be as dangerous as all the world’s evils. But without hope to accompany all their troubles, humanity was filled with despair. It was a great relief when Pandora revisited her box and let out hope as well.

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, especially when confidence is wounded, trust impaired.
There is something inside us that others cannot get to, it’s ours alone. No matter what is taken away from us, no matter what ups and downs we go through, our hopes, dreams and aspirations remain intact within us. Hope provides us with a sense of destination and the energy to get started and continue to pursue our dreams.

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. Abraham Lincoln, Mary, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know what it would exactly look like.

Once you choose the path of hope, anything’s possible. As Harvey Milk said- “The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it”.
Whenever there are decisions to make and choices to make do not consult your fears, but your hopes and dreams. Don’t think about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but what is still possible for you to do.
Unfortunately, not everyone hopes, many prefer being cautious, they are afraid of not fulfilling their dreams. They say that the brave do not live for long, but the cautious, they do not live at all!

A man without hope is like an engine without fuel, it’s just a mass of complicated twisted metal, pistons, cylinders and pumps. What can it do? Nothing.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, the quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. My hopes may not always be realized, but I always hope.

Hope is called ‘umeed’ in Hindi. The same word in Japanese means – destiny. Our hopes are synonymous with our destiny. They give a course to our life. Without them our life is like a meandering river that will never reach the sea.