Day 10: Hold On, Pain Ends

 

I found this acronym for Hope when I was doing my Advent journey.  I was looking for a definition of sorts to describe the very thing others seem to think I have lost since leaving Christianity as a religion and belief system.  I have often wondered what "they" think hope means.  

Hope is a future focused word.  It takes me beyond the moment and seems to remind me that it is the only life preserver I have to navigate tomorrow.  I'm not a big navigator of tomorrow.  For me, it is a place I don't live.  Things like imagination, planning, dreaming take me there on occasion, but I don't live there.  

I woke up this morning with strange thought. 

 "Hope is the vaccine for anxiety." 

 I pondered that for a moment and figured that the only way I can get up in the morning, without feeling totally paralyzed by the possibility that the next moments could be catastrophic, is because of a good dose of Hope that energizes my neurons.  Hope isn't something I have to consciously embrace, but it is a constant presence that moves me to the next moment.  

If the only thing I have to anticipate in this world is that one day my pain will end, then I'll be alright with that.  Whether that means I go on somehow or I cease to exist, either way... Hope to me means "Hold On, Pain Ends".  That also works in the short term.  Hope is what gets me to tolerate the pain in my life.  The intensity of the moment is survivable because I understand that the pain will end sometime, somehow.  

I remember the best advice I got in relation to grief.  A friend of mine, who was navigating my Dad's cancer and ultimate death with me, told me something profound.  I listened to him because his own father had just passed from cancer.  

"Ruby, the pain will end, but the sadness will remain." 

I understand that in so many ways and I think that is the effectiveness of Hope.  It gets us, not just through life as a whole, but through every moment of struggle and opposition during life. 

The last words that my Opa said to his pastor were about hope. Opa was a faithful Mennonite farmer.  He wasn't a big mouth when it came to what he thought, felt or believed... but his last words summed it up.  

"I have hope here, but I also have hope over there." 

Today's reading had me dive into what Immanuel Kant said about hope.  That is where the rabbit trail of "hope" began today.  

“Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.” IK