Everyone has heard the tale of pandora’s box, and how it is never to be opened. What some of you may not know is, the story tells us, that, when everything had escaped from Pandora’s Box, one thing remained HOPE.
Hope is a unique concept that only humans understand. While animals feel fear, stress, anxiety, joy, even desire, hope is uniquely a human.
What makes hope so important? Some might say it’s blind faith, but faith and hope are not the same thing. I have faith in my family’s love for me, but I have hope other’s also feel the love from their family.
Hope is a deep-set belief that things can be better.
Why is it important? Because, when there are outside pressures placed on us, illness, financial stress, various anxieties and fears, hope is what helps our psyche maintain our faith that there is a better future. Hope allows us to balance the narrative between the reality of a current situation with the possibility of a positive outcome.
However, maintaining a sense of HOPE can be challenging when so much of what is on social media and in the news, is negative. It is important to accept “bad news sells better” – by this I mean, you’re not going to hear about the lady who paid it forward at the petrol station for the young guy who’s debit card was failing, but you will hear about the youth who threatened the teller at the petrol station.
Maintaining a positive outlook is vital to personal health and selfcare.
The best way to do this is to be reminded of our ability for compassion, and our generosity as a community. People willingly give to countless charities, and within those charities many people work as unpaid volunteers – very faith restoring.
A neighbour offering help with your groceries or returning mail that was delivered to the wrong address, helps up understand we are not alone.
Watching a program where the kindness of strangers has us welling up with tears – these are tears of joy, and that joy is hope.
Having hope may not change the outcome for every event or circumstance, however, believing there is a chance of a better outcome, especially in very dark or sad moments, gives us a positive focus, which sometimes is enough, in medical cases, to even stimulate a placebo effect.
Having hope is having a way to see beyond the immediate – which may lead to a way to resolve any current questionable or unhealthy situation. Hope cannot fix a broken leg, or heart, but it does let us believe we can fix that leg, or heart, with time, and a bit of faith.
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