Dad Attitude: Our Inner Worlds
On your way home from work, when you turn onto your street and think of your family greeting you when you walk in the door—that’s hope.
When you see a glimmer of your son in the future being a gentlemen, and not the little terror he’s being right before naptime—that’s hope.
When your number one tells you they love you so much as you both drift off to sleep, that’s hope.
Or when you click submit on your application for that new job, that too is hope
Of all the emotions, hope is the most akin to magic. It manifests when the imagination is switched on by optimism in any quantity. You can be a little or a lot hopeful—either way, that tiny snippet of a vision or the enormous dream you’re dwelling on is alive and well. Hope fuels the subconscious brain in profound ways. Give it something to work toward, and it will make it happen. It sounds a little hokey, but “the secret” isn’t so secret. We can think our way toward anything.
There is, sometimes, a dangerous side to hope. We can hope for the wrong things. We can hope for things that bring harm to ourselves or others. We can confuse hope for desire, which can lead to jealousy, envy, or vice. Similar to what we wish for, we ought to be careful what we hope for.
Hope, however, isn’t defined only by anticipation or expectation of certain outcomes. Hope in its smallest increments is the space dust of faith. We often don’t recognize the hopeful moments because we’re too busy waiting for results. If we slow down and hold tight to the magic right in front of us—the very little things—we can be rewarded in ways we never expected in the first place.
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Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash