the flame of hope | #24
I think, a lot. I think about where I want my future to be headed, about the lives of people around me, about all our unique and special stories that have guided us in our path in one way or another. The thinking plagues me, for it brings pain and yearning to a heart not ready to embrace it. It brings me to places I have never thought of going, giving me a taste of what could have been and what could be if circumstances were different. It gives me hope, igniting a flame that in hindsight would have very well served me better not being lit from within. My experience with it has left me burning me from the inside, with every indication that I should never go back to it. Despite that, my fight or flight response has been to fight it, going back time and again only to get the same results repeatedly.
I don't believe that the seed of this flame was planted in me like how the birthmarks of people are planted onto them from birth. I think it is a result of years of careful, tender nuturing that have led to this point. However, the flame isn’t all bad. The potent but addictive combination of desire and deception over the course of years, culminating into an undescribable sensation of bliss and warmth every time the flame ignites from within is what we call hope, the very concept that has driven us past our breaking point to heights previously unknown to us. It’s funny how such an abstract concept has been the single most attributed word that is used to explain such a feeling. Of all the millions of words known to mankind and only one specific word to describe this concept conjured up in our hearts, minds and souls to defy odds and challenge the limit of our abilities.
The problem doesn’t lie with the flame, or what I did to nuture it into the double-edged sword it is today. It lies with my insistence and overconfidence that I am able to control it with relative ease. I feed it and tap into its seemingly all-powerful nature when I need the extra strength to achieve something out of my reach, not anticipating the consequences of indulging excessively. When the flame lingers on for too long, growing with each passing day, my mind is the first to go. It tells me to stop this from getting out of control, and that I will soon go into a downward spiral where I will be lost in my head basking in the dreams and grand ideas of a utopia that will never exist. But my heart and soul tell me otherwise. They like it, the power they get from it making them feel like they can do anything and nothing is able to stop them.
I may be entirely wrong, but that is what I understand hope to be. My parents used to tell me that having everything in moderation is healthy, and even too much of a good thing isn’t good for me. And I believe it. Hope is a tiny flame within me, providing a small amount of desirable hormones and feelings to provide a neccesary boost to help me push through and believe in a higher, seemingly out-of-reach goal. However, too much of it will come back to hurt me, burning me from the inside and throwing me into a pit of self-pity and leave me wallowing in my own dreams and ideas without ever getting a grip on reality.
Perhaps I will never be able to escape from this self-destructive cycle by identifying it before it gets our of control or resisting the temptation to indulge in it excessively. Perhaps this is the curse of my mind, my greatest gift and my biggest achilles heel. While my fight or flight response may never change, I hope that one day I will be able to say with conviction that I have mastered the art of control and be able to harness the power the flame and wield it to my advantage.
#24 — quand vous choisissez l’espoir, tout est possible.
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