Hoped.

2013 had many surprises- like every year.

It was another transitional year and I am thankful to see it to its conclusion (most likely, hah!)

I am also hopeful that the next year will hold many more surprises and good fortune.
Which makes me wonder... is there anyone who doesn't? Hope for future good fortune?
I think there are unfortunately.
People who don't feel hope for much of anything...
And for them I hope they may find some.
For others... I'll help them find some.
And the more time I spend as an art therapist the more I realize that the installation of hope and possibility is my job.
And I love that.

And in order to continue to do my job I must maintain a reservoir of hope.
For myself and others.

I don't know if its something anyone can do for their entire life... maybe?
I can hope? 

The thing is, hope can seem so fragile. So abstract.
So temporary.
It's an emotion after all.
And just like all emotions, for good or bad, it's fleeting. 

And in the spirit of the initial purpose of this blog- could it be that to be hopeful you must also submit to the idea that you may be hopeless?
That the work I am trying to do is essentially impossible? Without hope?
Yes...

There are many times that I am reminded of a quote.
It's actually become more of a guideline for my life (at least for the last few years).
I first found it in a mandatory class I had to take as an undergrad.
We weren't forced to take philosophy but we were asked to read various stories from the book "The impossible will take a little while."

In it was a quote but Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk. In a letter to his friend he wrote,
"Do not depend on the hope of results... you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself... You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people... In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything." -Thomas Merton

 To me, what Merton describes is the acceptance of both hope and hopelessness. When you accept the hopelessness of what you are doing and that it is highly unlikely to change, you begin to see the silver lining within the shadows where hope can survive and focus on that.
Merton determined that this ray can be found within the personal relationships you develop with others. And I believe that to be true as well.

The New Year often sends me thinking in these directions and I am thankful that I feel a secure sense of hope...
... I believe for the first New Years ever.
For the first time that I can remember in my life, I feel a firm foundation that no matter the future or past... 

Everything is going to be okay.