Daryl Wood's Blog

Listening to a radio program I heard the voice of a young woman waiting on the edge of life for confirmation that her travel documents are in order and she can leave her country to pursue the education she longs for. She has met the high standards of scholarship and now she must wait. And must is the key word here. She has followed through on every possible avenue so there is nothing more she can do. It’s out of her hands. When asked how she keeps going she says “You can’t live without hope.”

You can’t live without hope. Take a minute and think about that. You can’t live without hope. How often do we even consider that somewhere in our lives is a measure of hope no matter what we are experiencing. When our day is disrupted with conflicting relationships, difficult physical challenges, and the horrific news that lands on days like today, where is hope? Where is hope that ‘things’ will get better or not any worse? When we feel like we have “lost all hope” is that really true? Is there some sliver of hope that lives within each of us that we forget when our world – personally and globally – says there is no hope?

Well, I would have doubted that hope lived in me many times in the past two years but something has shifted. I have always been immensely grateful for the life I had with Doug and for all the people who have circled around me to support me. Lately I have been sensing that my history of a deep, loving relationship and the subsequent kindnesses extended to me have been keeping the flame of hope alive even when I passed through my darkest hours of grief and was certain there was no hope. And maybe that’s what we are all doing; keeping a flame of hope alive within ourselves and maybe in others.

So how do we do this? Today I got up and followed a recently developed routine of morning activities. Nothing sensational, just what I do in sequence to make sure some little things get done before I launch into my day. And in the mundane pace of eye drops, making tea, thawing wild blueberries etc. I realized that I do these things because there is a little hope inside of me that this will give me the foundation for my day, that these small steps will provide some structure that keeps me moving along for the greater opportunities that might lie ahead. I didn’t have a mental conversation about hoping this helps. I just did it automatically because at some point in time I believed, I hoped, this would start my day in a positive, self-affirming way.

Hope is so often connected with bigger dreams and aspirations and I love that. I have started a conversation with my heart daughter about a trip in 2027. I am hoping it happens and it gives me hope to think that in the future we will be doing something extraordinary together. And there is also hope that by eating my healthy breakfast, choosing appropriate clothes for the chilly weather, double checking my grocery list, that I will be prepared for the day ahead.

Each day we are given the chance to nurture hope within ourselves and you can’t live without hope. Mostly we might be doing this in subtle, unconscious ways and that’s great. Maybe taking a pause to see just how much hope lives within us we can embrace how hope gives our lives a rich and beautiful soft place to land.