Hope is something universal. Everyone has their own hope for a better life, hoping that everything will be great and all their problems solved one day.
In reality, hope is not related to wanting the things that we hear and see in the media, or the achievements and acquisitions we read about in newspapers and magazines. Desiring things like this is wishful thinking, which has less things to do with hope than you think.
These kinds of aspirations are more like feeding your ego or attempts to protect yourself from an uncertain reality. Nowadays people’s paths are full of suffering because everything is centered around money and objects, instead of people. On the other hand, there are wonderful exceptions to this assumption. Those who are creating a new world, by taking care of others out of their own resources.
What do we understand by hope?
For us hope is something that is worthy, something that is filled with unconditional love, creativity, tenderness, and solidarity.
But what does this exactly mean?
What is tenderness? As Pope Francis said tenderness is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears, and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, our hands to feel the other. Tenderness is the language of those who need the other. Tenderness is being on the same level as the other. It is the path of choice for those of the bravest and strongest men and women. Tenderness is courageousness. It is the road to solidarity, to humility, and the road to hope.
Yes, it is essential to find the definition of hope, that can be useful for all of us. But how we can do that?
In this week’s blog you are going to read about the followings:
- Doing something that is worthy
- Hope is the seed of life
- The capacity to love and let go
Doing something that is worthy
Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naive and ignore the tragedy, that the planet is facing. Instead of believing that things will get better, by wishing and thinking that everything will be absolutely fine, the definition of hope for us is to do something that is worthwhile.
Finding a reason to get out of bed in the morning, meeting with our friends, hearing the voices of our loved ones, doing work that benefits others, learning new things every single day. Having a generous heart that can touch other people and create a better world. It is a question of doing these actions with love and generosity. Love requires creativity, and a concrete and ingenious attitude. Just like Mother Teresa said: “One cannot love, unless it is at their own expense.” We take actions and we do things that are meaningful to us. And we can find these things even in the most extreme crises, in the midst of any turmoil. The seed of hope for us is any action we take that has meaning.
Hope is the seed of life
Imagine a little growing tree, that you just planted yesterday. Imagine the seeds that you planted as the various opportunities that you gave to this tree. Opportunities to grow and to be nourished day by day. A tree that has seeds will grow afterwards, but still how can we be so sure how tall it will grow in just a couple of years time?
Hope is an element, that creates reality for us, that can help us through life. Just imagine the tree as yourself. Sometimes you have more fruits to offer, sometimes not. Sometimes you can be drier or more in contact with other trees, but still it is the seed of life. It is all about the connection to life. The more connected we can be with life, the more involved we can be with hope.
On therapeutic encounters such as family weekends or summer camps for children and adolescents after the loss of a closed one we could see that activities we did in nature and connected to life brought a sense of hope.
The capacity to love and let go
We all need love and we all need each other to share this love. When we are able to love without attachments or without possessiveness, loving and accepting the other person as he or she is, with the ability of letting go, brings hope and a sense of joy.
Even if a person we love, is in a life and death situation, facing death –which can be the most fearful thing in many people’s lives. If we are able to unconditionally accompany the person in the moment, even though it is extremely sorrowful, we can still experience the feeling of love and beauty.
This is connected to hope. Naturally, we would want the person to keep on living for many years. We all need each other. We love, feel, laugh, cry, argue – in other words we live together. But in reality, it is not hoping for results, but it is hope that connects with love and with the capacity of letting go so we can just trust whatever will happen in life.
Life and death is connected with the human experience. We cannot avoid this. We can only change our perception about it and accept life with all its beauty, pain, uncertainty and love, while doing something meaningful. This the real hope for us.
Thank you for your reading,
Ivan Gomez Garcia
Director of Creative Accompaniment
Psychologist expert in Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care
Gestalt Psychotherapist (AETG-FEAP)
“Hope is the state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.” Václav Havel
