Hope Revisited

When I was a child, I thought I could be anything I wanted. Anything at all.

It's what we're taught in school, right? It's what many parents tell their children. It's what I find myself repeating to my kids sometimes when we sit down and talk about their future. I want them to know that with hard work and determination, yes, it's true... they can become anything they want.

Right???

Now we can discuss the merits of whether that kind of mentality is truly accurate or whether it's just a facade. And we can dip into political and social issues and go into what keeps certain bodies of the human race down while others rise so unseemly...we can name injustices as to why this happens. We could, reader.

But that's not really what this post is about.

You see, lately I've been feeling like something is lost. As we age, something gets destroyed, and the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it is hope that's lost.

Now I've written about hope before, way back when I first started this blog a few years ago. And I'm revisiting it again, because out of all of the human emotions, I believe that hope is the most powerful and potentially the most life-changing... if we let it be.

When you have hope, it literally lights up your world. But when hope falters, there is nothing worse than the darkness that seeps in and settles.

Think back to your childhood. In the eyes of a child, all is possible; nothing is uncertain.

As we age, the possibilities chip away little by little; the uncertainty rises.

Now I like to think I'm a hard worker, a go-getter. If there's something I want, I go for it and I don't like excuses. I take my time in whatever I do; after all, I want to do it well, not just rush through for the sake of having done it.

But I'm not going to lie. There is always a little voice inside my head that questions my actions and the possibilities I'm reaching out for. Why are you doing this? It says. What makes you think you can accomplish that? Sometimes it simply says, you're tired. Just rest. Who cares.

And sometimes I listen to it. Sometimes I don't. Regardless, I've noticed that I've increasingly let go of hope and the possibilities of what I could do with my life.

This is not to say that I no longer have hope, but it's that childhood sense of hope that I miss. You know the one I'm talking about. The one in which a mere stick is transformed into a sword to slay monsters with and rid the world of evil. The one in which the future stands bold like an exclamation mark instead of the question mark that we too often see as adults.

Somewhere through the years of life, we've learned the word "can't" and we've internalized it so well that it's just a natural part of who we are.

Of course I'm not silly enough to believe that a mere stick can really solve the problems that exist, like it once did when I was a child. But perhaps it's time to pretend a little and just believe that all things are possible. Just have a little more hope. That is all.

For life seemed better then, when we were kids and when all things were possible. Didn't it?

Hmm, perhaps I'm just feeling a little gloomy today. Tomorrow when I wake up, maybe the world will be as promising as it ever was...