on hope

For the first time in a while, I am hopeful.

Let me explain.

I used to be so scared to lose hope because someone along the line told me I wouldn't find it again. I thought that hope was like a charm, small enough to fit inside your pocket. You had to make sure it was secure at all times because once it was gone, it would be excruciatingly hard to retrace your steps and find the little charm. 

I can't really pinpoint when or where I lost my pocket charm but I did. Maybe it was during covid, or maybe my freshman year of college. I didn't even bother retracing my steps either. It was gone. 

So without my hope, my purpose got a little blurry. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel in a lot of things. I hated movies that required the main character to have hope to solve their problem. Because they had it and I lost it. I stopped looking for solutions to problems. Maybe I even believed there were no solutions. To my core, I am not a pessimistic person. Promise. 

I am sitting here writing this blog post with the most excited heartbeat–I have a hopeful heart. I see the light in everything there doesn't even have to be a tunnel. Whoever told me that once hope was gone it was lost lied to me. I have a new outlook on hope:

Hope isn't a pocket charm it’s more like a boomerang. It always comes back. It finds its way back to you. My hope has come back to me after who knows how long. And I had forgotten how good it feels to be hopeful. 

With hope, I can find solutions. Sometimes in the classroom, they say, “there is no answer to this really big question” or “there might not be a solution.” But in the amount of time it took for the teacher to finish their sentence, I’ve already found a couple of possible solutions. I’m hopeful as hell. 

Too often they say “just don’t lose hope,” as if it's the worst thing to ever lose (it's not, losing your purse is worse). But I lost it, then it came back, and I learned a lot in the process (life is one big classroom isn’t it?)

If you are hopeless, your boomerang might be on its way back. It always does.