Advice on Hope: Finding Peace in Not Knowing.

Dear Andrew. . .

Dear Andrew,

I'd love to hear what you have to say about hope. Hope for the future of the world, hope for good, hope for humanity, or just hope for ourselves as individuals. I know that is a very packed topic that could be elaborated on forever, but I feel your words would hit just right for many people. 

So, Andrew, my question to you is, “How can hope help us as individuals and the world around us?”

Take care, Anna

Dear Anna,

Hope is a beautiful thing. Often, hope turns the engines inside of us on; the engines that may have otherwise stayed dormant. When we are feeling down or discouraged, hope ensures that these engines keep running.

However, when talking about hope, we must also be careful. Sometimes we use hope as a means to over-describe the future for ourselves and the world around us. We hope that our children will become doctors or lawyers. We hope that we will become high-powered executives at the companies we work at. We hope that a certain politician will be elected. We hope for these things because we are convinced this is the ‘right’ path for us and the people we love, even though we have no idea where our paths are actually going.

The future cannot be described in a few hopeful sentences. The future is forever unknown and it will undoubtedly surprise us. The future will lead us to places we never knew were even places.

The great discipline of hope is being comfortable with the serendipity of life. It is to be at peace with the reality that we will never know what is next. It is to know in our hearts that our lives and the lives of those we love will work out, usually in unexpected ways.

This does not mean that having goals or ambitions is not important. Goals and ambitions give us the motivation to begin our journeys. They give us the confidence to make our futures better and to turn our world into everything we dreamed it could be. The key is to understand that these hopeful milestones are simply guides that can and will change; they will change depending on the seasonality of our lives.

Instilling this kind of hope in ourselves and in the people around us is incredibly helpful. It allows us to come to terms with the way our lives already are and to appreciate what we have while we have it. It brings a sense of peace to the mind by putting to rest our unnecessary worries. Finally, like a close friend, hope places its hand on our shoulders and reminds us that everything will be okay.

In light of this, we do not have to do much in order to reap the benefits of hope. If anything, we have to do a little less than we otherwise would think. Hope helps keep the fires burning inside of us and it gives us the courage to believe that we are larger than the things that scare us. However, we must not over-describe our hopes because the future has many unexpected things in store for us. It will show us people and places more beautiful than we can ever imagine. Our only job is to find peace in not knowing; it is to stand confidently at the crossroad between what we think our lives will be and the eternal unknown.

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Questions for Andrew?

If you want to ask me something, feel free to respond to this email or any others from me, or you can also ask me via Instagram.

Remember sometimes there is no right answer. Sometimes the most important thing is simply being curious enough to ask the question.

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Links

To listen to previous podcast episodes, click here.

For a copy of my poetry book, click here.

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