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REFRESH THE SOUL MEDITATIONS
Hope or Love: Which is a More Powerful Action?
Holding onto hope when all seems lost
What happens when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel? You have hope. What happens when darkness surrounds you? You have despair.
When there is uncertainty in the darkness (i.e., no light to pave the way), you can still have hope. In other words, even if you don’t know how things will play out, you can hold hope in your heart and keep it alive. When you relinquish to the vulnerability of defeat, you close the door of hope.
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands for a chance to succeed.
Then there is love. When your primary motivation is love, there is a shift because you hang on to your commitment to love, not because you sense a great outcome, but because your heart is leading with love.
Love is many things at many times in your life. It may not always make sense and might not offer a direct solution to your situation, but it can guide you forward, one step at a time, into the path of uncertainty.
If you keep taking steps forward despite not having answers, it can sustain you until another path shows up, giving you a new reason for hope. Even if hope never resurfaces, you can sustain yourself through love until the day you die.
In other words, you can lose hope, but you don’t need to lose hope of being good, kind, compassionate, and loving.
Hope is an act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and a culture of despair that depends on us not being able to imagine something better than where we are now.
—Rabbi Sharon Brous
I always say we all make choices. Even when you think you don’t have a choice, you choose to believe that. Therefore, you have made a choice.
