Born into this world as a child, with imagination and dreams, full of hope, you ran and laughed as you thought about all of the fun things you will do in your future. You are going to be a bus driver, a singer or an artist.
The hope of a bright and fulfilling future keeps you going, you dream about how awesome life as an adult is going to be.
But as you get older what happens? Some people would say reality sets in. I don’t believe it is reality so much as your hope that things could be different dries up. Without hope, your drive to make things better starts to shrivel up.
Instead of hoping for a bright future, you just strive to survive day in, day out with no hope that the future could be different.
As a child, you are less exposed to the despair of the world you live in. You watch cartoons about magical places or a place where there is always a happy ending.
You take these cartoon stories into your world and you play out the same scenarios knowing that everything will work out and everyone will be happy and full of joy.
As you age, what you watch changes. You are more exposed to the hope robbing media outlets. It sucks at your soul, all the violence, bloodshed, suffering and poverty. It turns your childhood dreams into a reality that is full of lack, fear, anger and despair.
Instead of pursuing your own childhood hopes and dreams, you gravitate toward others in the world of entertainment that seem to have beat back the darkness of the world and have found success.
You try to live through their success, so you can feel what it is like to have your own dreams come true because in your own life, the idea of getting ahead and achieving your dreams has become a pipe dream.
Your heart and soul may still call for it, but do you even hear it?
As a child, I was a dreamer. There were many times when I was caught staring out the window into my dream world during class. Being caught meant that my parents were often alerted to my transgression into my dream world.
I remember being told, “Dreams are just that dreams – they are not reality and are not meant to be”.
Being told that my dreams are not reality slowly drained out the hope that my life could be different. Instead I was destined to be like everyone else, following the same path. Did it matter that it did not make my heart sing? Nope.
It was instead about being able to live in a dog eat dog world. Where everyone did what they needed to do to survive. For me that meant going to college and getting a “job”, instead of finding and living my soul’s purpose.
As the years went on, I found myself lost. I was working a job that paid the bills but there was still this hunger inside. I could feel that I was supposed to be doing something bigger with this life.
I did not understand then that this was my soul’s calling, tugging on my heart’s strings. But yet I continued to ignore it and did what everyone else did and was grateful for it. Inside I felt like I was being torn up.
I fed the hunger in other ways, exercise, food and whatever else would take the hunger away for a second. Did I have any hope that I would ever find out what the true hunger inside was? Unfortunately not.
I followed the path of least resistance into the abyss. I went to work, ate, watched TV, slept and looked for love. Everything seem to be on the right path, but it wasn’t. As I delved deeper into this hopeless world, it started to take its toll on me.
My anxiety began to increase 10 fold. I was gaining weight and losing my energy. I was losing hope that I could feed the hunger inside. Even with that fear, I was still afraid to move as I was fearful that the world around me would come crashing down.
I continued on and eventually my lack of hope for a better future coupled with my desire to please everyone, started to affect every aspect of my life in a not so pleasant way.
The biggest thing that started to happen was my health started to spiral down a deep tunnel of despair. I didn’t understand it, I exercised and I ate healthy but still my life was crumbling under the weight of unexplainable health issues.
I was tied in knots with the fear of the world that might come to my doorstep or the fear of journeying to other places and what may happen when I left my safe sanctuary.
Before becoming sick hope was low, but when your health takes a nose dive hope goes out the window.
In the end, my life was unraveling around the thought of not having one thing. The one thing that allows the world to continue to turn and think things will get better, not just for you, but for the rest of the world as well. What is that one thing? HOPE. You hope that there will be world peace and that future generations have it easier than you.
For yourself, you hope that you can turn your life around and make your dreams a reality where abundance flows freely, your health is stellar and you have great success.
Being tied in knots and without hope, is the true path to despair. It sucks your soul dry. When you were a child, you hoped that the world would become a better place but what you really held onto was your hope of what your life would look like.
Maybe your childhood was full of laughter or maybe it wasn’t, but you held onto the hope that things could be different for you.
Hope is the driving force behind everything. Without it, you have no drive to make any changes. You suffer through what it is. All the while, you are dying inside and life gets harder and harder to live through.
Hope is not an illusion. Hope is in your heart. If you allow yourself to listen for it, you may feel a glimmer of its beat just below the surface. Know that it is there and it is waiting for you to re-discover it and welcome it back into your life.
With hope all things are possible. You can have and do anything once you push past the fear that is holding you back. Hope is the motivator that makes it all a possibility.
You deserve to have an awesome life full of love, peace, abundance, health, happiness, joy and bliss. You are supposed to live life to its fullest, exploring every nook and cranny that you find interesting, new places and new ways of doing things.
Most importantly, exploring your deepest, feeding the hunger inside that is telling you that your life is supposed to be so much more.
You must step out from under the thumb of fear and step out on your own to explore who you really are, as a unique individual. You have a special gift to share. You have a soul purpose. This is the life you were meant to live and in doing so create the life you dream about.
But the world is full of sadness, despair and anger. How could I be so selfish to do that for myself while others suffer? You came to this world as a divine being who deserves all life has to offer.
Dwelling on the world’s suffering only holds you back. What if your talent would help some of those people change their lives for the better. What if you were able to save just one? Would that not be enough for you to decide to grab life by its horns and use your unique talent?
Just think how different the world would be today if Henry Ford, Walt Disney or Nikola Tesla didn’t follow their dreams and aspirations. These three and many more have changed our world forever.
All you need to do is take your ideas, no matter how small and the world could become a better place for your actions.
Think about what life would be without heat in the car during winter (Margaret Wilcox: Car Heater) or the fear of someone being stuck in high rise during a fire (Anne Connelly: Fire Escape) or having an injury that required stitches in unsanitary conditions (Florence Nightingale: Sanitary Nursing).
What if you could bring joy and laughter to people like Nancy Johnson who invented the process to make ice cream or how about Ruth Wakefield who inspired us with the 1st ever chocolate chip cookie.
All these people have gifts and they did not let anything stand in their way of making them a reality. Yes people laughed at them or told them it could not be done but they pushed on knowing that this is what they were meant to do.
They did not allow sickness, lack of funds, fear or anger get in their way. They pushed those aside, held on to their hope, and hit the ball out of the park.
You too have this same spark inside. It lives deep within you, it’s your shining light. Its light may be dim but it is there waiting to be discovered, but in order to reach it, you must first embrace hope within your heart.
I promise you it is there, if only you would allow yourself to connect to it. Maybe thinking about it brings up emotions, let them out, cry, scream at the top of your lungs or stomp your feet.
Holding it in only dampens the light within you and spoils the gift of hope. Allowing hope in at first maybe scary. If you find this waiting for you, think of your childhood and feel the hope you felt as a child. Was it scary then? If not, why is it scary now?
Hope lives within you. It whispers in your ear for you to love and respect yourself and plants the seed of knowing that you deserve to be happy, loved and full of health, joy and bliss. It waits in silence until you are ready to hear its blessing. Do you hear it calling you?
What would allowing hope into your life allow you to have? Health? Abundance? Success? You can have all those things, but it starts with the one thing that makes all things possible – HOPE.
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Tami Reagor – Theta Healer
