We are exploring what it may mean to be hopeful but at what point do you call in the cavalry? When the plot thickens and the choices you’ve made suddenly reveal a hidden agenda and you are certain you didn’t see that coming… then Hope may be your rock – when there is no more left to do!
Incidentally, if Hope is having an affair with three other characters, do they all know that they are involved in each other’s relationships? Hope appears to be dating Expect, who commands respect and thrives on being assertive and confident. Risk likes to have Hope around when it feels like being mischievous and is basically using Hope as a bit on the side. Luck is the charmer and can be outrageously flirtatious but it is its own boss. You can’t make Luck do anything it doesn’t want to do; don’t plan a date with Luck and expect it show up – just hope it will. So if Risk and Hope are colluding one day, Luck could show up at the right time.
We all have an idea about what Hope and his friends mean to us. Why have I indicated Hope is a male? I have no idea! Probably, it is because I’m a female and Hope is my own personal soulmate whom I welcome as a companion on my own journey; in any case, it sounds protective and I can romanticise. Take the following situation as an example.
If you have chosen to apply for a job, you hope to get an interview. Then you go to the interview with expectations about the job and what you can deliver by remaining positive when you get there, all fired up, expecting to get the job. What you may actually be saying to yourself is, “I hope to get the job”. Some of us may not expect to get the job if we haven’t applied for a job like this before and have been told that the candidates attending are highly experienced. You are unlikely to know who they are and really, do you need to? Your priority will be to prepare and ensure you know what you are talking about – maybe say what you think they want you to say (that’s interviews for you). Also, say something they didn’t expect you to say that will give you brownie points. If you go along not expecting to get the job then you took a risk; as luck has it, you get the job!
Hope tends to be thought about with fondness even if we link it to situations that may not share the same level of enthusiasm. We may say the word hope in a tone of voice that carries an element of desperation keeping Confidence in the shadows. Alternatively, we may allow it to be spoken with unusual optimism or with a certainty in the voice that is representative of usual. We write it down and trust that the person who reads it will sense our desire for something to happen – either for them or for us! I reckon we tend to think about Hope more than we care to let on and remain unbiased in the way we use it.
So what does Hope think about his relationship to Risk, Luck and Expect? Let’s get to know this trio in a little more detail while exploring the different territories that they are likely to inhabit, and where Hope finds itself equally attracted.
Risk and Hope
Risk taking – doesn’t that accompany every choice we make? Even when certain that the right decision has been made, have you really got any control over the end result? Have we got any control over what is going to suddenly come along and impact on the choice we made, along the path we are on?
We are accustomed to thinking that a risk implies that something negative could happen – and it could. Equally, you could take a risk and the end result could exceed your expectations. Any concerns you had, when it started out as a threat, have now been relinquished as it becomes an opportunity. Anyone who has learned about project management will tell you that whilst you need to consider what the risks could be and have a back-up plan in business (as in life), a perceived risk may not happen and could be circumstantial. You may back down, if the risk is too high, or take a chance because the odds are for, rather than against. All the influencing factors, which you had time to explore, hoping they wouldn’t surface and negatively impact on your project, may change for a number of reasons.
What about when we take a risk that hasn’t had any time to build up momentum in your mind? For example, you pull out at a roundabout because, in that moment, you believe you can go around it without the oncoming car colliding into you. It is a risk. Although you chose to take it and instinctively felt it was OK to do so, you could not be certain that the other car wouldn’t crash into you or even speed up on purpose as you moved into his/her space with complacency. You cannot control the actions of the other driver – only anticipate that what you are ‘about’ to do will not impact on either of you. I can’t imagine in the moment, before you pulled out, that you had any time to say, “I hope I will make this!”
If a collision occurred and afterwards you were asked why you took a risk, you may reply that you hoped it would be OK. In this instance you made ‘Hope’ the scapegoat. So, you would have been hoping all along, subconsciously, but the nature of the risk didn’t allow you any time to cogitate and spiel out any protective mantras beforehand or during – if you were being that reckless. I would personally hope that if you did have any time spare to think about taking a risk when driving, your instincts would kick in and persuade you otherwise. Maybe it is best you reserve that adrenaline rush for a non-participatory viewing of the TV show, The Dukes of Hazzard (feel free to google this, if you don’t know what I am talking about).
As we are focusing, for a moment, around the implications of taking a risk, I am going to keep to the driving theme. Incidentally, the other day I witnessed four counts of reckless driving as I was on my way to work – all by one driver! I was travelling at a suitable speed and refrained from insulting each speed sign as I drove past. A car pulled out from a lane on the opposite side of the road to me, just in time to avoid a collision with the car ahead of mine. It was not another slip road and so he needed an invitation to join my lane! I wondered if he was lucky to be able to pull that stunt off or plain stupid for making the attempt in the first place and relied heavily on Hope; it was early in the morning. People make crazy manoeuvres trying to get to work on time. What gave it away was the look of angst that I caught on his face as the swerve of his car flicked the back wheels out and if you have ever seen the film, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, this was a close impression. It didn’t end there. He was speeding up; slowing down; overtaking the other cars, one at a time – even when oncoming traffic had no plans to slow down, making each one a close call. Risk number 2 (or 4, depending if you count each overtake individually) made me wonder if this guy was a consistent risk-taker in his everyday life, or was he hoping he wouldn’t get caught out, just for today.
Well, finally, through what appeared to be an act of impatience he winged a right, into a lane that was only supposed to be entered from the same side of the road and not from the opposite direction – cutting across. I can only recall the animated visions that appeared in my head as he zoomed off into the distance, to be seen no more. In what seemed like only five minutes (and at the start of the day, remember), this man took several risks. What does that say about the rest of his day – yet to come – and how many more risks will he take? Is Hope really giving up its generous time to mingle with such unorthodox behaviour? Will he really be thinking about ‘Hope’ while he is terrorising the community with his dangerous driving antics? Maybe he just expects all his risks to work out – and his over-confident behaviour is in fact his lucky charm!
We all do risky things in life. Some risks we take will be higher or lower than those taken by our peers. If it is something you do not ordinarily do, it will seem risky. If you are used to doing something all the time – and sorry to point out the obvious – it may not seem risky; you may know it is a risk but it isn’t emotive.
Expect and Hope
I hope that every time I make a decision it will be the right one. I probably do expect a particular thing to happen – is that logical or plain arrogant? After all, I don’t intentionally make a choice and plan on it not being the right one! (Do I?) Do you?
If we make a decision based on a limited number of options and hope that one of them will be the best out of a bad
bunch, will Hope act as a bridge to allow ‘what we chose and what we expected to achieve’ to safely cross together? If we don’t have any hope to glue the building blocks together, will the choices made and the expected outcomes have an opportunity to meet all on their own?
Do you expend your energy, consciously being aware that you are being hopeful, or is it just a ‘business as usual’ mindset that doesn’t need reassessing all the time? Some of the happiest people I have met are those who manage their own expectations and don’t need to keep checking in to see if these are being met every five minutes. Hope is an integral part of their lives that doesn’t need a voice and is quite capable of delivering against priorities and requires a little faith on your part to trust it to get on and do its job.
Hope just sat quietly and did what you wanted it to do. It silently travelled through space and time and cast its spell, sprinkling its magic dust on the decisions you made. It allowed you to take a back seat and watch patiently to see what worked out and what didn’t; it did its best. Hope did its best to meet your expectations. It cannot deliver every time.
Some decisions made during the choice-making process were flawed and not quite up to scratch. Sometimes, what we hope for will not turn up trumps and no matter how much hope gets splashed about, it will simply never be enough. You can’t blame Hope for not delivering and maybe you relied too heavily on fate to twist and turn. If you doubt in your own ability to make the right decisions and pull in the resource – Hope – every time, then that is maybe where you are going wrong. You have to have confidence in your own decision-making process. Stilting the process with a desperate plea to Hope to step in is not empowering.
That said, even I am hard pushed to not misuse the word, allowing it to slide in through the back door and mark its territory, giving it automatic membership to sit aside the rest of my vocabulary. I even use it first thing in the morning before I get out of bed saying, “I hope it is going to be a good day today!” There isn’t anything wrong with that sentence. It isn’t offensive and sounds quite innocent. OK, so I could sound more empowered: “It is going to be a good day today…” Any better? (Who’s convincing who here?) OK… how about this: “It is a good day!” I am still keeping the door open to the Universe and it can contribute if it feels up to it; I am not summoning it to interfere as it will anyway. I believe myself!
I know, I know; it is probably 6am when the word good has already breezed in to your life, for a fleeting moment, and then left your vocabulary by 7.30am, due to an alien invasion of one kind or another. This may appear in the form of a toddler or two; traffic lights that seriously didn’t agree upon each other’s schedule that morning, on the way to work; or running out of coffee meant that ‘Good’ had no right to enter your vocabulary in the first place.
Nonetheless, when you call on Hope (as you may have resorted back to doing) do you expect it to be a magician? Do you expect a day to run smoothly, with no effort? This is not an unthinkable notion. Why does everything have to be an effort, anyway? When I wake up, of course I hope it will be a good day; who doesn’t? I will do my best to make it a good day regardless of whether Hope makes an active contribution. I inject a little bit of passion into everything I do and it’s a fantastic feeling to end a day knowing I have done my best; I aim to pull it off without exhausting Hope, keeping it as a third party intervention – the same can be said for Luck.
Luck and Hope
Luck is something we aspire to meet in our lives with open arms and a humbleness to reflect a limitless amount of appreciation because it comes into our life as a gift. It crosses our path and charms us into thinking we may have made it all by ourselves, asking for nothing in return. We hope to attract Luck but I don’t know if we make Luck. If we could make Luck, just imagine what we could do with it; alas, it is the bonus ball and we all hope to be thrown one of those from time to time.
We create opportunities in our lives and hope that Luck will find us, more often than not out of the blue. We may assume that if we strive to create a clear path ahead, then Luck will hone in on us better. It finds us when we are not looking and also when we have had no luck in finding it, when we do choose to look! Are we looking too hard, relying once again on something else to improve our own lives? We hope it will find us amidst our own confusion, holding our hand when we reach out in the dark. Luck can find us when we think we are managing quite well on our own, thank you very much. Maybe we were doing OK because Luck kept us buoyant and we didn’t realise how many events in our lives were held up by bubbles of Luck that rolled around us, emulating our own curves, and looking back we were never alone – we had Luck on our side.
I don’t mean to be contradictory. I am toying with the idea that we must aspire to be mindful of what we are doing, where we are heading and how we plan to get from A to B during our lives, on our own and with the help of other people. I am also aware that some of us believe in being guided along by the silent visitors that walk our every step and we live in a world where spiritual intervention is present. Having said that, some of us do not buy in to this myth.
If Luck has anything to do with divine intervention, I am very happy to consider this as a little freebie in my life. If it has nothing to do with fairies, and an invisible force is reserved for a rendition of Star Wars, then so be it. If we cannot make luck per se, I would be keen to know why some of us have more of it, or so we lead ourselves to believe. Some of us are just down on our luck and have a tendency to think that the grass must be greener in everyone else’s lives.
The off-the-cuff comments, made by people who think everyone must be luckier, are reflective of their own relationship with the word luck. You just have to forgive any ignorance, when they direct one at you – we don’t all have the opportunity to tell our story and set them straight.
Sometimes a person is not lucky and created their own opportunities, making their own sacrifices along the way in exchange for the goods. They hoped that whatever sacrifices and choices they made on their path would, at some stage, give rise to a positive outcome which is perceived as being lucky. If you clearly have an audit trail to challenge this accusation and have the worn-out shoes as evidence, then Luck is unlikely to have carried you all the way. If you took a wrong set of steps, can you say you were unlucky or should you own up to the fact that Luck’s darker side didn’t have anything to do with your own poor judgement? If you took the right steps, but the eventualities along the way meant you didn’t have a hope in hell’s chance of getting through unscathed, this is unlucky! We all know when we have been lucky or unlucky – don’t we?
This brings me to the end of a section that I trust has got you thinking about your own relationship to Hope and whether it is just an acquaintanceship or the love of your life that you can’t live without. You may decide to stop being reliant on a supernatural force to direct you (or save you) before putting in some degree of effort yourself. You may choose to do both.
You may feel inclined to review how you approach those innocent ideas that start out as mere dreams. The ideas suddenly burst into life one day and as a result they fire off a round of choices in all directions landing in pieces on your path. Then you round them all up so you can make a few comparisons and a final decision but they often sit confused, still in pieces, suffering from concussion. They each appeal to your better nature, hoping to be chosen while you are also feeling equally confused. Hope will have your back – just ask for guidance.
As a result of discovering and exploring our path, and even experimenting with the choices available, we are given hope that there is room for improvement in all aspects of our lives. Sometimes we hope for no other reason, other than: because we can. For some of us – living in a challenging world – we simply need to have hope in our lives. Hope will be embedded in the first thought of the day and it will never stray throughout each waking hour.
Hope may be accused of adultery at times but it can be your friend for life.
Course 2
Fillings Experienced
in Moderation
Balance and Management
‘Confidence is a prerequisite for finding the
courage to feel normal.’
Our sanity is reliant on how we manage our emotions. Experiencing different levels of emotion is healthy until their extremes are met with adulation or fear. Knowing that neither can be maintained without the help of an external influence volunteering its support, or our own internal dialogue leading us decidedly astray, is at least some consolation when we are striving to find a balance in our lives. In other words, there will be something we can improve.
Whilst moderating our behaviour may be a sign of maturity in an orderly world, I question if orderly is representative of the world we really live in or a life we aspire to live, knowing full well that individuality will soon put a spanner in any argument coming close to implying that orderly would be in some way the answer to remaining sane. It would most likely drive me round the bend.
Exploring the essence of normality is deserving of a red carpet introduction because it underpins everything we crave yet everything we oppose. Quietly reflecting a confidence that is endearing yet well managed, it ensures that ‘different’ is synonymous with ‘normal’ until darkness seeps in and forces safety to come first.
How you define too much or too little of anything may depend on your own experiences and I’m certain the next character will provide you with a lucid illustration.
C*O*N*F*I*D*E*N*C*E
The Waiting Room
A beautiful sight to see! The mysterious cloud envelops the space around her delicate form, providing invisible armour that allows her to manipulate the air with grace, reflective of a practised craft. The confidence that keeps a ballerina on her toes is the same confidence that can lead her to fall. Too much or too little will affect her balance and anyone who watches a ballerina perform, at one with her surroundings, will see a seamless, yet well-managed flow of movements that may have you thinking that she was born with it.
Emotional Sandwiches Page 6