HOPE

HOPE
Music and Lyric by Jason Robert Brown

I come to sing a song about hope
I'm not inspired much right now, but even so
I came out here to sing a song
So here I go
I guess I think
That if I tinker long enough
One might appear
And look, it's here
One verse is done
The work's begun
I come to sing a song about hope
In spite of everything ridiculous and sad
Though I'm beyond belief, depressed, confused, and mad
Well, I got dressed
I underestimated how much that would take
I didn't break
Until right now
I sing of hope
And don't know how
So maybe I can substitute strength because I'm strong
I'm strong enough
I got through lots of things I didn't think I could
And so did you
I know that's true
And so, we sing a song about hope
Though I can't guarantee there's something real behind it
I have to try to show my daughters I can find it
And so today
When life is crazy, and impossible to bear
It must be there
Fear never wins
That's what I hope
See? I said hope
The work begins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngKrb8PHfM&app=desktop

I play this song every day. It's become part of my new daily routine to listen to the words and feel inspired to live with hope and not just fear. Just by playing the song, I am acting on hope. It is the small, positive choices repeated daily that can help us to take back some control during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although, fear has become the new normal of how we react to the coronavirus, adding hope to the narrative can be exactly what we need to know that we will get through this together. This crisis is bringing out the best in people and if we take the time to notice, we just might call it Hope.

HOPE is somewhat difficult to define in tangible ways but here goes. This is my own personal translation of how we see it play out in our daily lives. Hope is what keeps us going in the most difficult of circumstances, such as what we are living with today. Hope is always available to us, but we must choose it. When we can't access it within ourselves, all we need to do is think about hope, talk about it, and the feeling of hope comes up. Perhaps, we need to ask someone to help us find it. Just by asking, The work begins.

HOPE is believing in something that you can't yet see, but know that it's possible. It is the belief that change is doable that helps us feel that good things will happen. I believe we need hope to go on living. Hope inspires us to expect and anticipate the things we truly want. It instills in us a feeling of optimism about creating our future. Hope is what motivates us to move forward.

Hope reminds us that life is worth living. It's the part of us that sees good, not just bad; joy, not just despair; laughter, not just sorrow; love, not just hate; healing, not just pain; togetherness, not just separateness, and so on. Hope allows us to see the best in our humanity.

On a deeper level hope helps us to define and give meaning to our struggles and setbacks, successes and failures, strengths and imperfections. Hope is the thing that makes it possible to face and endure life's ups and downs with courage and come out stronger, wiser and better because of it.

Hope as you can see, matters a lot.

Right now, everyone can use some hope. We are living through a global pandemic that has turned our lives upside down. There is fear of uncertainty and fear of actually dying from COVID-19. What we are experiencing for the most part, are normal reactions to abnormal events. Nothing about what is happening is normal and yet we still have to find a way to make sense of it. The facts alone are not enough to get us through what seems insurmountable and paralyzing. We need hope to balance out fear. We need to exercise our will and determination that fear is not how this story will end. There is something we all possess, something you might say is innate to our spiritual nature. That something is called HOPE.

May you be safe and well.

Thank you for reading!