Society is a wild place that definitely has a way of inflicting some questionable things on the people in and around it. One thing that typically is made out to be a positive thing, “Hope” sometimes can do more bad, than good, depending on the situation.
In the dictionary the word “Hope” is defined as follows,
Hope n. 1) a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen
A person or thing that may help or save someone
Grounds for believing that something good may happen.
2) a feeling of trust
Verb. Want something to happen or be the case
Intend if possible, to do something.
In life we all go through rough patches, bad times, and all of the ups and downs life has. Some choose to get stuck in the thought of, “I can’t believe this is happening to me!”, “Why is it always me?”, “My life sucks!”, and so many other thoughts, as everyone typically goes through from time to time. But then you have individuals who try to have hope that everything is going to get better. The ones who want to try their best to be positive as much as possible. Here’s the problem with those people though. The ones who want to hope their situations will get better. Sometimes we hold onto hope a little too much. Yes, I said it. Sometimes people who like to have hope things will improve and change and go back to normal hold onto that hope, and don’t realize that having hope is not enough to fix certain situations.
We are made to believe that having hope of things getting better over time is a good thing to have. We believe that hope can help us cope with bad times and situations. It can help us cope and get through things, but there are times where having hope things will work out and be better isn’t enough and it isn’t worth it to hold onto. Sometimes holding onto hope does more damage than good. Trust me. . . I know. We need to understand when we should keep hope, and when hope is no longer helping us, but is inhibiting us. I did not understand this until I was presented with a situation that would teach me that.
I opened up about my senior year of high school experience briefly. While it was a very tough time for me, and while several people from then I no longer interact with. I honestly don’t hate any of them. There are some I never did and still don’t really care for, but there are some who I, even though some may think I shouldn’t, I do still care about and hope to god they’re doing well. I miss a lot of my friendships from then, but everything happened for a reason. One of those reasons was for me to learn exactly what I am talking about now. We can hope something will get better, but we cannot hold onto hope for too long. I wanted so badly at the time to have high hopes that certain things would get better, and that certain people would be the people again that I had known them to be, instead of being the people they felt like they had to be to avoid various things. I was upset one day and was talking with my mom after getting into the car to leave school and I was telling her about whatever was upsetting me at the time, and she responded with whatever her response was. I cannot remember her words exactly, but I asked her something along the lines of “Why are you frustrated that I want to have hope that things will change?” Or something like that. And she explained that there is nothing wrong with having hope, but at some point, we have to figure out when having hope is becoming unhealthy and is just causing us more pain than good.
I was hurting myself so much trying to hope that things would work out. By trying to have hope of better things I was actually making the pain I was experiencing worse, because while I was hoping for better, I was just watching everything not go that way. I should’ve just gone along with accepting what I was seeing to be true, and let it be the reality. But instead I just kept on with trying to have hope. Because I knew hope to be a positive thing, but until my senior year I did not know hope could also be bad sometimes. We can, and should, have hope in our lives in various ways, but we need to make sure we are aware of when having hope starts to just hurt us more than help us.
I love all of you very much! I hope you are all doing well, and that your year has been going well for the most part! This year has gone by so fast! I will see you again in my next post. Until then, keep doing what you can, remember that you are so valuable and important, and always be yourself!
Best regards,
The Inspiring Hummingbird!