I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately.  Hoping things turn out ok, hoping someone special to me is ok, hoping that maybe, just maybe “this” can work for me too.  Hoping for a better world, hoping for healing, so fucking much to hope for….

I don’t want to hope something for someone that they don’t hope for themselves.  Talk about an imposition of will based on some judgments that what I want for you is surely better than what you want for yourself.

Synonyms for hope include the words expectation and anticipate.  All of these are looking toward the future.  If it’s not ok to future trip with worry, why is it ok to future trip with hope?  Let’s ditch worry, hope, regret, shame – all of it! – and live in this moment, with radical acceptance and surrender.

Brené Brown talks about faith and worry not being opposites.  She suggests that the opposite of faith is certainty, faith and worry being two sides of the same coin.  Let’s look at hope and worry with similar eyes, as being two sides of the same future coin.  That being the case, the opposite is presence.   

Hoping for some future, better condition is a sort of slap in the face to the perfection of now.  Maybe rather than hope for something different I can be grateful for what is.  Maybe rather than hope for something better, I can do the powerfully magical work of shifting my consciousness and seeing the world through different eyes –  a perspective shift that allows me to see the perfection of the moment.

“Maybe, just maybe, this can work for me too…..” What ever happened to doing the right thing for the right reason? Does this mean I am choosing a course of action based on my desire for a specific outcome – like “it working”? What if things turn out differently than my image of “working” – does that mean I did something wrong, that I didn’t try hard enough, that I am hopeless.  What if I miss some really beautiful outcome because I am so stuck to this vision of what I think life should look like? What would happen if I do what is on my heart to do, solely because it is on my heart to do?

Photo Credit:
http://www.kendrarenzoniyoga.com/blog/sraddha-faith-fear-exhaustion-doubt

I come from…

Well, of course I come from my mother –

and a long line of mothers before her.  And that is what is obvious…  My mother and my mother’s mother, and her mother before, all quite skilled in the art of survival.  They survived cruelties, witnessed disgusting acts of hate and power – and, somehow still had dinner on the table promptly at 5.

They sacrificed their children on the altar of someone’s hunger, on the altar of making nice and looking pretty, and…were up at dawn preparing breakfast, headed to the fields.

I come from a long line of lies, broken hearts, and pretense – always, always pretense.  And, when it all became too much to bear, too much to hold together, I come from a long line of violence.

I come from my mother, who not being able to bear the pain and constant struggle of holding the façade in place, firmly powerfully in place, escaped through a tiny hole in her arm.

In her escaping she shifted the legacy, only perhaps even darker now than before.

I come from…

I come from a place inside myself that will not be denied.

Shrouded in cultural atrocity, presented as normal, passed off as appropriate… I come from a place inside myself that will not be denied.

A place of stars, a place of grace, of raging fires and ravaging storms… I come from a place inside myself that will not be denied.

A place of ubiquitous love, of grand creation, a place of interwoven mystery and cosmic unfolding….

I come from a place inside myself, that, though carefully walled in and dressed in the fabric of a culture that could care less, will not be denied.

Originally written January 11, 2015.

Image credit: http://s357.photobucket.com/user/MangekyoChidori2089/media/monk22.jpg.html