Hope

A Twitter post by someone in my PLN last week sent me searching the internet for a "meditation experience" led by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra.  I have been in search of ways to include meditation in my daily routine, so I took a peek.

The name "Hope in Uncertain Times" encouraged me to look a little deeper. I signed up for the website, quickly realizing that I had already missed the "beginning" of the 21 day experience.  I thought to myself, "Hope has been your word for years. You wear a ring everyday emblazoned with the word hope.  These are definitely uncertain times. How many quotes related to hope have you retweeted, shared to your timeline, captured in photographs? How many times have you used the word "hoping"? You know all about hope - but this will be a cool way to integrate meditation while getting to hear what Oprah and Deepak are saying about hope."

I was so wrong - which made it so right.

Each day of the experience offers a short lecture about hope, what it means, how it manifests itself in our lives, and how to embrace hope and all its power. Then, you meditate.  Afterwards, you journal with some guiding questions and finally a self-reflection.

Wow, do I have a lot to think about.  Here's my reflection after day one.

Hope has always been a word I've felt connected to, so I was excited to see that it was the featured idea in this meditation. I was surprised to find that I'd never really broken down the word meaning or thought about how it applies.

After Caitlin died and the ring fell into my hands (my teenage hands, no less) the message seemed clear - have hope for the future and nothing bad will happen. Then, as I got older, the quote from Shawshank sunk in (Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.) and it took on a little more meaning - the idea that hope is vital and it can never die. It isn't a tangible thing. But you have to have it.

I say "hope" all the time - "Hope you have fun!" "Hope you make the team!" "Hope you feel better!" But "hoping" and "having hope", I realized today, are two different things. I'm looking forward to exploring and building my sense of hope, because my meditation today just proved to me that my hope is flailing, my hope is leaking, my hope needs to be built up big time.

I am looking forward to my future work around hope. The strongest idea that I am mulling over and over in my head is that life challenges are almost always a win-win - either they are positive challenges or they give you an opportunity to grow. I am working toward looking at each of my experiences during the day as win-wins!