Many, many people deal with tremendous difficulty each and every day. These are people we know; they might even be those who are reading these words. If we don’t identify now, chances are we’ve been there; or in time we might return.
Difficulties are known, inherently, to life.
Financial concerns are probably greatest, or those relating to health. Both of these will impact on our primal human need — the compromise of our safety and security.
What helps (or hinders, depending on your viewpoint) most, when we’re struggling continually, is to know that there is myriad suffering in the world. We’re not alone.
It helps to know this if we have the resources of empathy for others stowed, but it hinders if we can’t see past our depressed circumstances.
Hope Required
When we’re in the midst of the daily struggle, somehow we need to attach ourselves to visible, tangible hope.
Winston Churchill was famed to say, “When you’re going through hell, keep going!”
Making it through has to be priority one, but that’s not getting us through the quavering minute. We need something to help now; something that’ll bring us a sense of peace and calm.
Searching for the required hope is a skill; one that builds with confidence upon actual success.
Hope is an ever-present thing. We just need to know how to find it. It begins with a search, or the commitment to search.
Just knowing life will not always be like this, or this hard, helps. If our hope extends to eternity, so be it. Our remaining years are a blip compared with what we have to look forward to.
Most people, however, will not have to wait that long. The key is to enjoy what can be enjoyed. There is enjoyment to be had anywhere. Look for it. When we find it, it’ll make difficult life bearable.
The Power of Vision
Hope is a vision. Far off or near, it’s something far enough away it motivates us to get there. And we’re never more purposefully headed in that direction.
This is how we know resilience.
Struggles without depression, because they’re pungent with meaning, are getting us over the line.
That’s realistically all we need to do — get over the line.
Vision helps us, also, to fly off into the land of imagination — a brief sense of relief where we can join our dreams and become for a moment what the light promises.
Surviving comes down to hope.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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