Читать книгу The Woman's Book of Hope - Eileen Campbell - Страница 6

The point about hope is that it is something that occurs in very dark moments. It is like a flame in the darkness.

—JOHN BERGER

Each of us at some point in our lives is likely to experience adversity, grief, and despair. For some, the crisis may follow the loss of a loved one, an accident, an illness, or an unexpected firing or dismissal. It may be an ongoing struggle with poverty or abuse, or it could be simply the dire state of the world with its inequality, violence, and terrorism that plunges us into a deep depression.

Whatever the cause, hope seems to elude us, and fear, doubt, and confusion make us lose our way. We reach rock bottom. This is sometimes referred to as a “dark night of the soul,” originating from the title of a poem by sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross. On such occasions it's hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel, we feel overwhelmed by the darkness, and the future stretches bleakly before us. We find ourselves questioning the whole basis of our lives and whether there is any meaning and purpose in them.

Hope is the opposite of despair, and we need it because it helps us deal with our suffering, but how is it possible to coax hope from the embers of despair? We can start by reminding ourselves that the light is always there, even though we can't at the moment see it. There is never a time when dawn doesn't break or winter doesn't end. Hope is like the bird singing in the dark night, sensing the approach of the dawn light. When we accept that light is the other side of darkness, we are more able to face our dilemma. Nothing stays the same forever—things change, we change. We can turn things around and begin again, perhaps making something good out of the pain and turmoil we feel.

It may well take some time to accept and come to terms with what has brought us to this juncture, but that glimmer of hope in the darkness helps us find resources that we didn't know we possessed. We discover a different perspective that helps us deal with the situation. As Maya Angelou, the American poet, writer, and social rights activist, put so well, “God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us—in the dreariest and most dreaded moments—can see a possibility of hope.”

Once we have tasted hope, we can hold on to it, magnifying it while building a vision of something better. Hope makes the present less difficult to bear and gives us the energy to pursue our dream. Our dark night has been like a death and a rebirth, an awakening to a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Each new day we can cultivate a more expansive state of mind and enrich our lives with the prospect of a brighter future, one in which the essence of who we truly are is revealed, as spoken of by the Persian Sufi poet Hafiz:

I wish I could show you,

When you are lonely or in darkness,

The Astonishing Light

Of your own Being!