In the letter that Andy wrote to Red were the words "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things, and no good thing ever dies". This was towards the end in the movie Shawshank Redemption (1994). These words have stayed with me for years now and still have the power to make me look at the bright side of life now, and always. Every morning when I get up I hope to have a great day. Every time my child waves to go to school I hope she has the best that the day has to offer. Every time my spouse leaves for work I hope he would come home with a smile. Every time my family calls I hope there is some comforting news to be shared. Every time my friends come over I hope we will have a great time together. There is hope. Hope never dies and I never let it go. Hope is like a never-ending story.
Do I build faith or keep hope? I have often struggled to distinguish between these two and without exaggeration have arrived at the conclusion that somehow hope has the longevity that faith does not. Faith can move mountains but hope just urges you to move on and look beyond. If you think hard there could be many such moments when our faith could be fragmented, broken, shaken, shifted, dimmed and same could happen to hope but then hope just refuses to die, unwavering and unconditional. The dictionary meaning of faith is - 'complete trust or confidence in someone or something' and hence has the inherent susceptibility to get eroded or shattered since its core is trust. Somehow hope has a certain eternal and ethereal quality that it just goes to live on and on. It can start at any point in life, for the silliest of thing and anywhere. Its a desire for something to happen. Faith is a very strong feeling and may require strong mind to build and attain but hope is something which even a weak heart or feeble mind can sustain. Language too has a flicker of hope not faith. We are prepared for the worst and hope for the best. Our prayers are full of hope even when there is no proof that someone up or out there is listening or cares.
I believe that hope is built on memories. Our memories are what make us. I feel that having an elephants' memory is a double edged sword. To put it like a lay person, memory just retains anything and everything that comes its way and does it in different compartments after we have experienced. To me memory is like a ocean. It keeps within it all that has been thrown in it. But like oceans, memories too throw back everything at us from time to time. Hence its our choice whether we want to take the bad ones right back in from where it came or just look at it and decide to leave it out. I hope to never let hurtful memories come back even if they come crawling. I hope to shut all the doors of my heart to such memories and even hope more so to come out of them. In every situation I hope to let the memories be that person who I was or could be right now. That's it. We need to just live with it or end up dying in absence of it.
The Frank Capra timeless classic 'It's a Wonderful Life" (1946 - starring James Stewart) sends out a truly wonderful and beautiful message of how important is our being born to someones' life. We never realize. Whatever goes down, should come up. Its not me its science. I have had my share of moments where I had hoped I was not born but then I just forgot all the life blessings that I got while growing up. Its despair that has the potential to weaken hope. I hope that all of us could have the magical power to retain memory from the time we were born. To see the look on faces of parents when they held us for the first time, to see the happiness we created as we moved in life, to see the difference we made to the lives of people we met etc etc. I hope we realize all that would have never occurred had we not touched the numerous lives we came upon.
Sometimes I feel its very important to just let it be. Hope is a good thing and good things never die. Hope might be frail but it will be impossible to kill.
Ma
A beautiful thought, equally beautifully expressed. Hope doesn't have substitutes and alternatives! Hence, let's swim with it!
ReplyDeleteThe cornerstone of faith is trust which takes years to build but seconds to break. Hope takes seconds to grow but stays on.
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