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The Value of Hope
The Value of Hope
The Value of Hope
It’s one of those things in life I feel as though the everyday person takes for
granted because no one ever knows how much they relied on it until they’ve
struggled to find it. This struggle feels like you are in a never-ending abyss,
constantly trying to climb out but never making any progress. How do you find
hope? Hope being the very undervalued thing that’s a core part of us and what
drives us.
We define hope as “the expectation that one will have positive experiences
mean looking at life with a sense of positivity and optimism. Hope drives
everyone. No matter what stage of life you are in, it’s essential. Hope is the very
thing that makes you want to do anything. Where and what people find hope in is
really neverending.
I was walking on my colleges’ campus the other day, and some group had
put out a big board and wrote on it, “What give you hope?” and they were
handing people markers asking them to write their answers. The answers ranged
from my mom, Jesus, God, my family, my wife, etc. So truly, people find hope in
so many things.
So what happens when you feel like you can no longer find it? What
happens when you wake up in the morning and feel like you have no more hope
left? Well, It should come as no surprise that hope or lack of it has a close
couldn’t really come up with an answer to that question they were asking on
campus. I’ve been in one of the worst depressive episodes of my life for the last
few months, and writing “I got myself out of bed this morning” or “after four hours
of laying in bed today, I convinced myself to go to the store” didn’t seem like the
good enough. This not only made me feel worse than I already did, but I had
managed to make myself believe what I thought they would think if I had written
weren’t good enough and actually just meant that I truly had no more hope in
myself or my life. I realized, though, who says that simple mundane things can’t
be what gives you hope. I got myself out of bed today, and for me right now, that
I’ve been clinging to the very last strings of hope I can find for the last
months without even realizing it. I think that’s how you do it, though, how you find
hope when you feel like you’ve completely lost it. Remember to remind yourself
to keep looking for reasons to have hope, no matter how small, dumb, or silly you
may think others may find it. If it is the reason you can get yourself to continue
202110/the-psychology-hope