An Endless Road of Possibility

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I always find New Year’s to be a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s a marker of time. A year has passed and it’s hard sometimes not to focus on what hasn’t been achieved or what hasn’t changed. On the other hand, a new year stretches before us like an endless road of possibility. It is this dichotomy that often makes it hard for me in the first couple of weeks of January.  Which is why I love this quote.

The older I get, the more I’ve come to realize that life is hard. Friends can let us down. Lovers can break our hearts. And family can drive us crazy. Work can be hard to come by. Money can be scarce and the world around us can seem to be teetering on a knife’s edge. Especially these days, making it very, very easy to let fear take over. Which is why we have to make a conscious choice every day to fight back.

Hope is the slayer of fear. It’s like the white knight of fairy tales with the giant sword. So, where do we find it? Some may find it in a church. Others in a spiritual path such as a Course of Miracles, yoga or meditation. For me, I find hope in nature like the sun’s rays peeking through the clouds after a fierce storm. In dogs playing on the beach. In children discovering a great book for the first time. And in my friends and family who have loved me through the good times and the bad.

Hope. It’s all around us. We just have to look.