Hope for the hopeless
Earlier this week I had a dream. My dreams tend to be vivid and I retain much of the information when I wake up. The dream I had made me reflect on the concept of hopelessness. Hopelessness is what happens when you feel you are in a dire situation with no clear way out. I have felt stuck in a state of hopelessness at certain times in my life. It is not a good place to be in as your mind goes to a dark place. Things that previously seemed far outside the scope of what you could bring yourself to do, now seem plausible or even logical. Your acts can become more desperate and you may make decisions that go against your better nature.
Right now, there are folks who may be feeling a sense of hopelessness with everything going on. You may have just lost a loved one to sickness or violence. You may be in a financial situation where you do not know how you are going to survive through the next week. You may yourself be sick, maybe with the number of days you have left to live ticking down. Whatever your situation, I am writing this for you.
We can succumb to the feeling of hopelessness and allow it to take us, to consume us and turn everything around us into torment. Or worse, make it seem like the only way out is to end our existence.
This is a lie.
It is the most dangerous of lies, it is the lie that seeks to distract us from what we can do with the time we have left. Often, we focus on what we cannot accomplish in our remaining time on this world. We focus on what has been stolen from us. That is the ultimate distraction, the thing that causes us to squander precious time. Time is finite, each one of us is born with a limited amount of it and how we use it dictates the path of our lives. Do not squander your time. It does not make sense to regret the time we have lost, rather, we must focus on what we have left and make use of it in the best ways possible.
A time will come in all our lives where hopelessness is knocking at the door. We cannot let it in. The moment we do, it begins to tear our house down around us. Do not let something as destructive as hopelessness have free reign in your life. Life was never meant to be fair, striving for fairness is a fantasy we cannot afford. Rather, we must stand defiant in the face of the unfairness and push forward. We must make the best of what we have and stay content in the fact that our time has been well spent. And if you cannot claim that for yourself, use the remainder of the time you have left to make that true and confidently declare it so that when your time on this world is up, your purpose will have been fulfilled.
PS: If you think you may struggle with mental health issues, it’s okay to get help. It really is. Don’t suffer alone.