Hope: Burden or Gift?

Hope. I am sure that I do not need to go into any great detail explaining to you what it means to hope. We have all hoped for something. As children perhaps you hoped for a special present or as an adult perhaps you hoped to get that raise at work. Regardless of your age, you have hoped. I also, have hoped.

I am a self-described hyper-emotional individual who, for some reason, experiences the emotional to such an extreme that at times it manifests itself into a physical reality. Under even the most subdued of circumstances I feel emotion on a level which seems much more in depth than most. Hope is the feeling to which I have the most significant connection. 

Hope has been my best friend more times than I care to imagine. My hope has carried me through some of the darkest times of my life. When others may have been broken, my hope was my strength and carried me through untold trials and tribulations that would have broken even some of the strongest people of character I have met. Hope has been my only defense against the despair I feel when I pick up a newspaper or flip on the news.

I carry within me a small spark; a fractal of light which urges and pushes me forward in life. Without it, I am certain that I would have given in long ago. But hope has carried me through. My infinite amount of hope has provided me with the greatest surprises and greatest joys of my life. What greater sense of reward is there than to have your hopes answered?

This infinite hope, however much it has aided me in my struggles, has also been party to many of the causes of my pain. When one has an infinite amount of hope it can be the greatest joy a person may experience but it also leaves you open and vulnerable to the deepest sense of suffering one can know as well. My endless hope has set me up to experience some very terrible disappointments.

When things seem certain, when the outcome seems destined, we still hope for the result we are sure to receive. It is under these circumstances that hope stops being your strength and becomes your weakness. When you pour your hope into everything that you do, it is easy to leave yourself defenseless against disappointment and suffering.

Hope. It is my greatest blessing and my most lethal enemy. I have tried to decide which of the two it is and when it comes down to all the I have experienced, good and bad, I have no choice but to state that hope truly is more of a blessing than a curse. To feel joy is a greater feeling than to feel sorrow; to feel love is greater than to feel hate; to feel compassion is greater than to feel nothing.

I embrace my gift despite the pain I allow myself to be exposed to. Why would I permit myself to suffer? Because of all the things I have hope for, none is so great as the hope I have for Human Beings. We have such amazing potential; possess such incredible knowledge; experience such a beautiful existence. Though I am constantly aware of the atrocities being committed around the world, I carry my spark, my beacon of light in the dark and stormy seas of life not for my own benefit. No. I carry this gift, this burden, to share it with people. I carry it so that in their times of despair, when all hope seems lost, when they have given in to the pain and suffering, that they need not have hope for I will have it for them. I move forward under the sometimes unsustainable weight as an example to those who would despair so that they know there is hope; that there is love; that someone does care.

I hope. You should too.