The word: Hope

Hope: verb- intend if possible to do something.

I remember a few years ago sitting with some college friends talking about life, emotions and goals. It was something I ponder often and I believed that my true goal was to feel contentment. That things like happiness are never permanent, no-one feels happy all the time, but the feeling of contentment would be most wonderful and what I strove for.

But tonight I sit here, at 2:35am, realising that perhaps there is a far more beautiful emotion. Hope.

Life, for the most part, has been pretty bleak for the past few months and I, unfortunately, have been feeling the total opposite; hopeless. The emotions, if any, I experienced were predominantly negative and I’d lost faith that there is ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. That was, until this evening.

And here I am, with tears filling my eyes, feeling like there is potential. There is beauty, there is brighter prospects ahead – I am hopeful. And perhaps one day I will feel contentment and decide that my 17 year-old self was correct and it is the most beautiful emotion, but for now it seems unlikely.

Hope is a ball of light in your gut that spreads throughout your body. Your hands feel warmer, your heart beats a little stronger and a slow smile spreads across your face. It fills you and although it cannot totally negate the sense of dread or fear or sadness you may experience it engulfs them, and in these moments it is the strongest sensation.

Now, I must admit that hope is something that a lot of us can lose quickly and it can certainly seem difficult to find. But surround yourself with anything that’s ever made you feel it, write them down, store it, so that even if you cannot feel it in the moment, you can recognise that it existed once and it will again.

I aim to clutch on to hope. To allow myself to feel it, no matter how dark days may be. To make it my constant aim, to spend my life hopeful, and I encourage you too also.