Feeling Hopeless?
What is your bright light? This past year has been rough. Unfortunately, it’s not just been something in my world. The number of people who have experienced major losses, depression, and overall life upheaval this last year was more than just those around me. We are experiencing some major growing pains as a culture, and there have been a lot of worlds that have been turned upside down. In the past two weeks with my work, I’ve been inundated with emails from poor souls who don’t have any passion in their lives, or don’t know how to dream. How did we all become stuck in a world with no hope? It got me thinking yet again about the power of positive thinking.
Do we really have no hope, or is the problem in our own perspective?
Life balance is teetering on a tightrope of work, work, work in our society. We get caught up in doing all the time and sooner or later, the day has flown by and it’s merely been a day of survival. Community gets thrown by the wayside as we hurry to get our errands run, our chores done, and the bills paid. When we get together with friends, our talks quickly go to the long list of “to-dos” and becomes a competition on who has put more hours in at work, or has the wildest child, or anything else that puts us in the martyr role.
Our tunnel of work becomes so long that all we see are the dark items on each side—we lose sight of our “bright light” at the end—the reasons we do what we do. What is the goal of making money? What is the goal of buying groceries? Working? Carting kids to events? Lugging the whole family to church or whatever community you have established?
Isn’t it all to achieve a better, more fulfilling life?
Isn’t it all to embrace the “bright light” in all of our lives?
Our children, our spouses, our friends, our parents…the music we love, the nature we relish, the time spent learning about new places, people and causes… don’t we all have something to be thankful for?
When you look outside your window and see the green leaves and the buds blooming, how can you say there is no hope? Even the plants are excited about the new day. When you are surrounded by negativity, your tunnel gets longer and longer as your bright light of hope gets muddied in the mess. But remember, no matter where you are, there are rays of sunshine peeking through, both figuratively and literally. Take the time to notice them. Embrace each bright light in your life, no matter how small…you’ll find the more you notice them, the brighter those lights become.
