Hope

Do You Need to Be Happy to Feel Hopeful?

January 28, 2022

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash


“Hope isn’t the same thing as happiness. You don’t need to be happy to be hopeful. You need instead to accept the unknowability of the future, and that there are versions of that future that could be better than the current one. Hope, in its simplest form, is the acceptance of possibility.

“The acceptance that if we are suddenly lost in a forest, there will be a way through.”

—Matt Haig, The Comfort Book


Everyday adventures

Meeting Myself at 17

October 31, 2014


In the course of cleaning out a closet recently, I found a box of keepsakes from high school. It was educational, to say the least. This box contained treasures such as:
  • A Pee-Chee All Season Portfolio (anyone else remember these?)—I bought at least one of these every year to confine my class work.
  • My school ID from senior year of high school, complete with its coveted sticker allowing me to leave campus for lunch. My best friend and I often drove in her green VW Bug to her house to eat, just because we could.
  • Programs from high school plays I appeared in.
  • Copies of my annual high school literary magazine. My work appeared in the publication, and I was a staff member.
  • Final projects from creative writing class—collections of poems, stories, photos and drawings from the entire school year.
  • Journal pages from the journal our creative writing teacher required us to keep. She would read the pages, or not, as you requested. If she read them, she’d occasionally jot comments on the pages—can you imagine reading the journals of 20-some high school students?!

I spent a few happy hours reconstructing my high school days, cringing and blushing at times, surprised at others by how similar my writing voice now is to that of my 17-year-old self.

I had fun reconnecting with the girl I used to be. The exuberance, the highs and lows, the enthusiasm and hunger for life. That girl was easily cast down and just as easily sent soaring. It was in high school that I began to be able to negotiate around my shyness, finding pursuits I loved (writing, drama, tennis) and participating in life on my own terms. It was here that the seeds of who I am today were sown.

Looking at my picture and reading my words, I see a vibrancy that I wish I still had. In comparison, I’ve become muted by life and responsibility, even though that responsibility was taken on willingly and happily: building an adult life, working, raising a child. I see a more refined version of my 17-year-old self in the mirror today—some of the rough edges knocked off, the fears calmed, the goals achieved. What remains is hope for the future, curiosity about what’s next, excitement about what that might be—and yes, a little bit of fear as well. I have learned that fear is normal, and nothing to be, well, feared.

My life now is starting, in small and subtle ways, to have the same sense of possibility I felt at 17. My child is (almost) grown up, I’m settled in my home, I know how to cook and clean, I can pay bills and run my life efficiently. Most of the things I wondered and worried about have come and gone and I can turn my concentration to new possibility. What will the next 10 years hold? I see my journals (not to mention my blog posts!) asking this question. Wondering what the next adventure(s) will be. Wanting to have adventures, everyday and otherwise.

I remember what it felt like to listen to music and dream about the future. I still do that, only now I’m in my home office listening to my iTunes library instead of in my bedroom listening to a turntable. I still jot poetry in a notebook, write in my journal. My future is a bit blurry, as it was then. I’m more deliberate in my choice of opportunities to pursue now, because I have a better idea of what I like and don’t like, what I can excel in. I no longer have adults telling me what to do; I am learning to listen to my voice, because now I have experience and wisdom of my own. I want to incorporate my 17-year-old self’s enthusiasm into my current life, temper her fears with my maturity, and build a future me that combines all the best parts of us. 

Do you see your past selves when you look in the mirror? How are you the same (or different) from who you were at 17?

At 17--senior class photo

David Kessler

Happiness Is Possible Today

February 12, 2014


“We insist that we can’t possibly be happy until tomorrow, when things change. But if happiness is possible tomorrow, it is also possible today. If love is possible tomorrow, it is possible today. We can find healing even if nothing changes. To surrender to life ‘as is’ can miraculously transform situations. It is in this surrender that we are able to receive. The universe gives us the tools to fulfill our destinies when we let things be.”
—Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living.

Possibility

A Glass of Possibility, Please

January 11, 2012


“If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?”
—Soren Kirkegaard, Either/Or