Hope is the muscle that needs rest

July 16, 2019 10:45 AM

Harvey’s course on shadow work lovingly reminds us that we must prepare for the end of hope. We must stand in the truth of the self and allow for the incineration of all the illusions, including the most beautiful one of all, the illusion of hope, to come into the reality of the extremity of the situation.

Quite the counterintuitive thought.

After all, we have always been taught that nothing is hopeless in this world unless we want it to be. That hope is the small place inside of us they can never lock away. And that hopelessness is the primary disease which precedes all symptoms.

But to be fair to the unfairness of life, what if our hope was a muscle that, like any other muscle that’s in constant use, needed rest? What if our hopefulness required healthy expressions of its opposite to preserve our sanity remind us that it had a pulse?

As a pathological optimist, these questions create cramps in my brains. It seems so out of character for me. Off brand. Too much cognitive dissonance for one romantic to handle. But the lesson life has been teaching me is, just because we’re willing to lay down our weapons of hope for a while, doesn’t mean we have succumbed to the dark side.

Just because we have accepted the reality of living in a world with rough edges and difficult truths, doesn’t mean we have become cynics who rob themselves of the gift of life.

As my favorite movie detective once said, it’s like collecting diamonds on a desert island. You keep them just in case you ever get rescued, but it’s a pretty big ocean out there. Perhaps surrendering to the waves is good for the soul.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you doubting reality, or your limited and biased perception of it?

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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