Hope

Over the past few weeks, we've tackled the heavy topics of uncertainty and fear, both kindred spirits, both determined to do their utmost to halt us in our tracks.  So, what is it that lets us keep going even when those two brothers are conspiring to keep us down?

Hope.

Someone once described hope as a little bluebird of happiness.  I'm not sure any assertion could be farther from the reality.

Hope, my friends, is an earthworm.  It is blind, living its life in the dark both literally and metaphorically.  It is surrounded at all times by dirt and grime and filth and the most disgusting things one can possibly imagine.  It is lost, confused, and frequently ignored.  What, then, keeps that earthworm moving forward, through the dark, through the muck?  Hope.  Hope that something better lies just through the next mouthful of dirt, hope that cleaner soil is in its future, hope that it's not going to stick its head out of the ground by accident and become lunch for a passing bird.

Hope can ignore all the awful things going on around us and give us the strength to keep on despite overwhelming odds.  Hope can let us turn a deaf ear to the taunts and jeers of our detractors.  Hope can bring light to an otherwise dark world.

But hope is stupid.

Hope is a powerful tool, but it reacts the same at all times.  Hope sends us the same message ("We're going to live!") whether our situation is minor ("I just got stung by a bee!") or dire ("That asteroid the size of the moon is about to smash into the Earth!").  Hope doesn't care where we are or what we're doing -- it tells us at all times that what's ahead is going to be much better/not what we feared/just fine, regardless of what our rational mind is telling us.

Does that mean hope is useless?  Far from it.

Take gasoline, set a flame to it, and it explodes.  Every time.  Without fail.  What use is that?

Stick gasoline it in a confined space (such as the combustion chamber of your car's engine) and set fire to it, and that explosion becomes something incredibly useful, without which I wouldn't be getting to work today.

Hope is the same: it's powerful and potent, but unless we use something else to temper it and bend it to our aid, it will be nothing but a hindrance to us.  Next week, we'll talk about that oh-so-important tool that will turn hope into the Creative's most powerful weapon.