“To be the rock that the waves keep crashing over, It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls around it.” – Marcus Aurelius
Meditations Book 4, quote 49
7:50 am
Hope.
That’s what today’s journal entry was about and I asked myself, what is hope?
From a really objective standpoint, a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. That’s at least how Google describes it.
I feel that is true, but I don’t think just stating a certain thing to happen is enough clarity or depth for a word that holds as much power as it does, it can be the thing that keeps a person together or breaks a person. Hope is something very powerful on the same standard to me as love.
I’ve done some research on the psychological aspect of hope and its power, it is in fact very real. Hope as defined by psychologists is the overall perception that goals can be met.
There are two important factors that tie into what I’ll call an optimization of hope.
- The first factor is the quality of your thoughts related to your goal or situation
- The second factor involves the invention of pathways that can be used to achieve a single goal.
I feel that stating these factors is important, the first factor being the quality of your thoughts related to your goal or situation. People with high levels of hope within them are the same people that seem to always have positive thoughts and live out the saying “anything is possible”. This thought process doesn’t just work for hope but for everything, a positive mindset is preached throughout all of history, an amazing little quote from my favorite teacher Marcus Aurelius is,
“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”
Meditations Book five, quote 16.
This is something I find myself stating a lot as it’s so very true, with everything we do. The more conscious of our thoughts we are, the more conscious we are of how we’re looking at things. That color of our mind he’s talking about is likened to stating that our thoughts affect our perspective, in a simple way.
A broader and more positive perspective and you now unlock the power to plow through with the second factor.
Understanding that there’s no single path to achieving your goal. Hope doesn’t get shut down because something didn’t go the one way that you hoped it would, every obstacle is just the creation of a new path.
Hope is something that I feel isn’t looked up to enough, the way I felt about it and as I feel many others do
Hope can crush you, people say that hope can kill a man when they hold onto it for too long.
But at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s hope that can kill someone.
I think it’s the loss of hope that will.
So I ask you if you feel that you need a journal entry today.
- What am I hoping for right now? what are some of my goals and what are my levels of hope within those said goals to succeed?
and on the other side of things
- What are some things that I have lost hope for? and why did I lose hope for those things?
At the end of the day, I feel that nothing is forever lost, and nothing is forever kept, but hope can ensure that anything you do want, can and will be achievable if you wish for it too.
Keep your head up, and be the best version of yourself today. Don’t lose hope.
My final message to myself from today’s entry was
You will grow from pain and suffering more than you’ll grow in any other way possible. Life goes on. So you must as well.
8:44 am
Thank you for being here. Have a great day. I’ll see you for tomorrow’s Journal entry and whatever else may be typed.
Here is a link to my first post and a brief description of what this blog is.
3 responses to “Journal entry 1 – Hope”
Good post “Hope”
Hello Jude, it was a pleasure to read your thoughts and I look forward to reading more in the future.
Hope is a fascinating emotion, no doubt the fuel for any sort of development. Ironically I looked into this topic a while back and came to my own conclusion that hope is an internal clash between faith and fear. Let me explain-
“From a really objective standpoint, a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. That’s at least how Google describes it.”
Hope is our own interpretation of how we would like a non-existent future to happen (how can you feel hope for something that has already manifested?) To tie into your example Faith is the rock in which the waves crash over, immoveable and undeniable; absolute. Fear is the anxiety felt when you ask questions contradicting the rocks ability to stay strong in a sea of waves or think ‘oh a rock cannot withstand the forces of nature forever, it will eventually move’. In reality one cannot know until the future has happened whether or not the rock will move, the rock just continues to hold fast unknowing of what will happen.
In a nutshell, you can choose to live life by fear, only doing things because you are scared of the consequences or choose faith, doing things because you believe in them. Maybe this is why some lose hope and some hold on.
Live life by faith instead of fear, because there is no hope without choosing one. There is no future because it hasn’t happened yet so believe in what you do and the so called future will reward you.
I leave you with this quote, “Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future. Faith is the courage to dance to it today.”
-Ethan 😀
Thank you for this message ethan, you have some amazing insight and input over this article. I really enjoyed your interpretation of hope and how theres the two polarizing sides of it, with there being faith and fear as the two aspects of it. I love how you dived deeper into the analogy of the rock in the water and how the rock is unmoving only until it moves, and theres no reason to predict whether it will or not as it hasn’t yet. The last quote is very beautiful and i love the artistic thought process of it to describe the 2 parts of hope, Im going to be sure to write this one down. Thank you very much for your input and comment its very much appreciated.