What Hope means to Life?

Hope is an interesting concept really.  It presumes that the Human is already in distress, doesn’t it?  I mean why would one even need Hope unless they were experiencing some form of suffering.  If your life was just peachy, with nothing but peace, joy and love – what role would Hope play?  Any ideas out there?

Fortunately for Hope, we humans tend to suffer a lot (hahahaha).  So perhaps in order to understand Hope, we must also truly understand Suffering?  Or perhaps in truly understanding Suffering, we are able to transcend it completely, so both become meaningless?

There are plenty of references to suffering through ancient mysticism and religion, but I have to say, I like what Eckhart Tolle has to say about it. I can’t really quote him on it, as its been many many years since I’ve read The Power of Now, but my consistent understanding is that suffering is caused by our own thoughts, and more specifically the thoughts that are disagreeing with “What Is”.

In a biblical sense, we were taught the story of Lucifer and how his disagreeing with God (What Is) led to him be banished to Hell (absence of God). Now I don’t buy the story at its surface level.  My concept of God does not place Him/Her on a human ego level. It is human/societal to “banish” or “punish” someone for disagreeing, I just don’t see the Almighty Omnipotence casting out egotistical judgments, I mean come on… are there really people out there that think the All That Is would be so cruel as to cast horrific fates upon the poor wee little humans?  Well, even if you do, you gotta giggle a little about that! 😀

I digress….   Anyhow what I mean to say is that disagreeing with “What Is” is like creating your own personal Hell. Its like holding onto the hot fire poker in adamant denial that its hot.  Its like getting dumped by your significant other, but in complete denial about the fact that your relationship was not all that good anyway, you refuse to ALLOW getting dumped, and therefore you hold onto something That Is Not.  This attachment to What Is Not causes pain.  On more simple levels, you wake up in the morning and start planning your day, but LIFE happens and things don’t go as you wanted — then you stomp around the house all pouty and upset because you cannot accept that LIFE took you in an unexpected direction.

ACCEPT WHAT IS!
The alternative is to DENY WHAT IS and feel suffering for it.  And guess what, IT STILL IS *AND* NOW YER HURTIN TOO! *clap* yay! 😉

But alas, for as much as one might understand the above, we crazy humans still get all pissed about What Is.  It’d be cute if it didn’t hurt so much hahaha.  And because we still create our own suffering, now enters the beautiful naturopathic medicine…. HOPE!!!!

See with Hope, we have a reason to strive through our suffering. Because on the other side, we HOPE there is what we really want!

I’ve seen my father go through this recently with his health issues.  I’ve told him countless times over the years that 90% of his pain is caused by the thoughts he chooses to give his attention to and repeat.  On his good days, he even agrees with me.  However, he has been living for the past year without hope.  No hope for the pain to go away, no hope for a normal life again, what life? he just lost it all getting sick, even if by some miracle the physical issues stopped, what life is there beyond that? nothing to go back to, no hope, hopeless, worthless, meaningless…

Now who can live that way?  How could any human expect to return themselves to good health without hope?  Where does hope come from? How do we get it when we’ve lost it?  Those are important questions… ones I don’t really have the answer to… I suspect its very different from person to person, belief system to belief system, life circumstance to life circumstance…

Nonetheless, my brother and I found a way to return Hope to our dad, and instantly, the life starting returning to him! Suddenly he is more mobile, getting around, doing more, feeling better, sleeping better, his mind is clearing, the darkness fades!

This experience made me consider what Hope meant to humans… what Hope means to me.  I went through a darker period of my life too, much of it centered around feeling that life is pointless. Took me down through some darker tunnels within me, ultimately leading me to strike out of the society life to answer the question “Who Am I?”.  Ultimately I suppose I can give a lot of credit to Hope!  In looking at the world around us, it is easy to feel discouraged in Humanity and our potential future.  One might ask themselves why they even bother.  My answer for that is HOPE!  I maintain Hope that I can experience the world that is envisioned in my mind. I maintain Hope that I can experience masses of humans working together for the sheer goal of improving the life of all beings and discovering more about ourselves and our uni(multi)verse.  And even yet, if my hope of experiencing it does not come to complete fruition in my life time, that spending my life working towards it is a worthy and exciting reason to live life.

A reason to live life….

You know, throughout our lives, there really aren’t that many experiences that we can retain vivid memory of (considering there are 24 hours to a day!).  So in my life, I realize that often the most memorable memories are when I have come across complete strangers who just happen to say the most incredible things to me, even if it seems they don’t realize they said it.

So when I said “A reason to live life” I was stuck again by the memory of this mature Russian lady I met at a cafe in costa rica.  She was just walking by our outdoor seating area when she stopped, walked up to our table and asked to join us (my wife and I).  “Of course!”, we said, and then pursued some of that “small talk” we humans do as we try to find common ground with another person.  It wasn’t long before the lady said to me:

“You know, we humans are always trying to justify our existence. Some do it through some ’cause’ in activism, some do it through their career, some do it with fame… but most people do it by having children.”

These words really stuck to me.  While I sensed there was some pain behind this lady’s expression, the concept still seemed accurate, my truth sensors were tingling!  Yes, this makes sense, and even can be seen across societies/cultures!  I’m not sure if I can really explain the many scenarios where this truth seems to apply, perhaps in another article sometime, but I can see it nonetheless.

And then I wonder at that.  Why would we humans feel a need to justify our existence?  Or another way of putting it that may compute better for you is:  Why do we humans feel the need to have purpose in our life?  Ahh yea, that wakes something up.  Is having purpose the same as justifying existence?  Hmmm seems interesting!

And it is a good thing to ponder. Where does this desire to justify come from. Why can we not just exist and be merry? Is that what cute little bunnies do? hmmmmm.  Is that what Siddhartha figured out?

So whats the conclusion?

1. Hope can cure suffering (or at least greatly reduce it)
2. We create our own suffering (through the thoughts we repeat and give attention to)
3. Others can help us create Hope
4. Hope & Suffering are both null (once you’ve dawned the cap of enlightenment)
5. And don’t talk to crazy russian strangers 😀

How has Hope affected your life?