Give Someone You Know That Same Gift

I conversed with someone who is job hunting. At the end of our discussion they said, “There’s always hope.” When I read this poem by Emily Dickinson (#254) it made me think about that conversation. It is true, there is always hope. It may feel distant or faint, weak or even feel impossible, yet there is always hope.

Emily Dickinson only published one poem in her lifetime. After she died the housemaid found over three thousand poems, on scraps of paper, tucked away in a trunk. Emily’s father did not approve of women writing, so Emily did it anyway in the privacy of her bedroom. She wrote, filled with hope that someone would find them, read them, and share them. Aren’t we glad that housemaid opened that trunk to reveal all of it’s literary treasures.

Sometimes we do things not knowing what the outcome will produce. We do these things not for fame or fortune, we do them because if we don’t we cannot be our true self. Buried in all those things is the idea that hope will prevail in some way, shape or form. Like Emily describes, hope is like a bird that sings the tune without words… and never stops…at all.

How many lives, ideas, inventions, and dreams have been kept alive with hope? How many people kept working, kept hoping, kept believing that it would all work out? And how many horrible circumstances have been made more bearable with the simple tune of hope without discernible words dancing inside someone’s head? Hope may be fragile but it is VERY hard to kill.

So keep your own hopes alive. Keep going, keep doing, keep up that silent vigil hoping that tomorrow, or next week, or even next year things will change. We never know what lies ahead, no matter how much we try to plan and be in control. Hope gives us the power to believe things will become more than we dared to believe. So keep your own hope alive and give someone you know that same gift.