Hopeless
Hope: It's what gets you up in the morning, and it's what keeps you going when you feel that you "can't go on", as dramatic as that sounds.
What follows will sound even more dramatic:
I'm running low on hope.
Most people's lives -- in fact, everyone's life -- is a book. A story. Everyone has an interesting story to tell. Part of the intrigue and beauty of life is the constant changing -- the different jobs, people, surroundings and day-to-day affairs in which we find ourselves keep life surprising, sometimes stressful, and new. But it's that same mystery of the unknown, the fact that life is constantly changing that feeds the need for hope. How long will the high last? How long will the bad times continue? What happens tomorrow?
So I pose a conundrum to those of you still reading: Do you think life would be easier or more difficult if people knew exactly how their story was going to end? What if we all went around with our own Book of Life, a tome on all the workings of what our life held in store for us. Would you read it, if you could? I mean, since everyone's life is a story, we should all be able to have and autobiographical account of our being alive. But, like reading a good mystery, would you be patient to read one page for each day, or would your curiosity for your favorite characters force you to jump to the end of the novel to see how the story ends?
See, I love to read mysteries and spy novels and the sort. But I have this problem, whenever I get to the end of a chapter, where there will invariably be some sort of cliffhanger or moment of surprise, I can't seem to control my eyes as they feverishly scan down the page, just grabbing at the keywords until I know how the chapter ends. Then, once I know what I've read, I'll go back and give it a calmer, more thorough reading. So I wonder if anyone else would be like me. Could you imagine the sight? Lots of people frantically reading the end of each chapter to see how their day, week, or month will be. But this, of course, begs the question:
What if you don't like what you read?
I guess that's the beauty of hope, in the end, at least. Because no matter how curious we may be about the future, we're secure in the knowledge that we don't know what tomorrow brings. There's always the possibility that we can change things for the better. There's the chance that tomorrow might bring about something better than today. Even if our stories end in tragedy, we can be secure in knowing that we don't know what's coming. But that also leads to fear. It's the perfect catch-22: Is it better to know that you're going to be miserable or happy, or is it better not to know? What if you knew that your story was going to be tragic, but there was you could do to stop it? Where would you be then? I don't think people would believe in their own powers of freewill if they thought that they were a passenger on a doomed train, with no hope of getting off at any of the stops along the way.
There goes that word again: hope.
Well, this takes us back to the beginning, then, doesn't it? I guess it's just the rantings of a tired and depressed man. I haven't been in class, to the gym, to yoga, in a voice lesson -- or anything -- in over a month. And it doesn't look like I'll be back any time soon. All I do is work, work, work, and it seems that no matter how much money I make, it's never enough. The waves just keep crashing into the shore, and they never stop. And I'm tired of trying to deflood the basement.
Still, I couldn't be happier...
What follows will sound even more dramatic:
I'm running low on hope.
Most people's lives -- in fact, everyone's life -- is a book. A story. Everyone has an interesting story to tell. Part of the intrigue and beauty of life is the constant changing -- the different jobs, people, surroundings and day-to-day affairs in which we find ourselves keep life surprising, sometimes stressful, and new. But it's that same mystery of the unknown, the fact that life is constantly changing that feeds the need for hope. How long will the high last? How long will the bad times continue? What happens tomorrow?
So I pose a conundrum to those of you still reading: Do you think life would be easier or more difficult if people knew exactly how their story was going to end? What if we all went around with our own Book of Life, a tome on all the workings of what our life held in store for us. Would you read it, if you could? I mean, since everyone's life is a story, we should all be able to have and autobiographical account of our being alive. But, like reading a good mystery, would you be patient to read one page for each day, or would your curiosity for your favorite characters force you to jump to the end of the novel to see how the story ends?
See, I love to read mysteries and spy novels and the sort. But I have this problem, whenever I get to the end of a chapter, where there will invariably be some sort of cliffhanger or moment of surprise, I can't seem to control my eyes as they feverishly scan down the page, just grabbing at the keywords until I know how the chapter ends. Then, once I know what I've read, I'll go back and give it a calmer, more thorough reading. So I wonder if anyone else would be like me. Could you imagine the sight? Lots of people frantically reading the end of each chapter to see how their day, week, or month will be. But this, of course, begs the question:
What if you don't like what you read?
I guess that's the beauty of hope, in the end, at least. Because no matter how curious we may be about the future, we're secure in the knowledge that we don't know what tomorrow brings. There's always the possibility that we can change things for the better. There's the chance that tomorrow might bring about something better than today. Even if our stories end in tragedy, we can be secure in knowing that we don't know what's coming. But that also leads to fear. It's the perfect catch-22: Is it better to know that you're going to be miserable or happy, or is it better not to know? What if you knew that your story was going to be tragic, but there was you could do to stop it? Where would you be then? I don't think people would believe in their own powers of freewill if they thought that they were a passenger on a doomed train, with no hope of getting off at any of the stops along the way.
There goes that word again: hope.
Well, this takes us back to the beginning, then, doesn't it? I guess it's just the rantings of a tired and depressed man. I haven't been in class, to the gym, to yoga, in a voice lesson -- or anything -- in over a month. And it doesn't look like I'll be back any time soon. All I do is work, work, work, and it seems that no matter how much money I make, it's never enough. The waves just keep crashing into the shore, and they never stop. And I'm tired of trying to deflood the basement.
Still, I couldn't be happier...