On Hope

Okay, so I've been lurking in the blogosphere a bit more lately. I read a ton of posts on Facebook, public and in a plethora of groups I belong to. Reading Facebook is like a full-time job! Am I right, or what?

Anyway, I've noticed a few things these past few weeks, and I wanted to touch on one: Hope.

I know what it's like to hope for something that happens. I know what it's like to hope for something that doesn't happen. And honestly, the word hope can be equated to anxiety. Ha!

But I don't think hope is a bad thing, and often we think of anxiety in a negative way. But hope is well, hopeful. Sometimes things work out the way we'd like. More often than not, they don't. We might get a book deal, but not with the publisher we really wanted, for the amount of money we hoped for, etc. Sometimes we hope for things that never come to fruition.

Does that mean we should stop hoping? I don't think it does. I think having hope is a good thing, a strong motivator for us to keep doing the best we can. That could be that we hope today is going to be a better day than yesterday as far as parenting goes. Maybe tonight I won't burn the chicken (one can hope!). And maybe, just maybe, today will be the day I lay down 1000 words in a book that will one day be published.

Having these hopes in various aspects of our lives motivates us to keep trying. Don't give up. Try something different.

And none of that is bad.

How hopeful are you right now?