Hope (Not just an Obama Thing)

Hope is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

Hope can keep alive the spirits of millions but can also spur on a lag in life that will put you at a stand still because you are living in a hope that will never be realized. Hope has kept me after guys that I should have been over much more quickly, hope also got me through the cancer and eventual death of one of my best friends, hope keeps me going everyday when I find that my existence has amounted to very little and I don't think I am going anywhere with my life. Hope is a dangerous thing because, to be frank, we have to learn that giving it up is not always a bad thing. Sometimes giving up hope means moving on with life, means new beginnings, means being able to make room to hope for something else. Hope is a dangerous thing.

And what happens when your lack of hope has been a protection mechanism? When you have made the conscious decisions not to hope for something because you knew that there was no way it could be yours? That you were satisfied with just not hoping because it meant that you had more space in your head to think? That functioning was not depending on hope but the lack of it? And what happens when that thing becomes a far off distant possibility? How does one deal with that? Hope does one deal with the surprising presence of hope? Hmmmmmm...I will get back to you.

~The Singing Ginger