Hope

Hampl talks of discovering that her life had a story, was a story. She realized that her bus trip was happening to her, that she was being "entrusted" with experience. An event that gave me a parallel if not exact realization occurred this summer. What I discovered was hope. I found that everything that had happened, was happening, would happen, had a purpose. The events in my life that I had been taking for granted, that I watched as Hampl watched the countryside go by, were real, that my experiences were shaping me and leading me onward towards some unforeseeable goal. I no longer fear pain or suffering because they shape us all into who we are meant to be. While we can't write off the trouble we experience, we can know that it was meant to be and the rest of our lives will be affected by what we learn from that pain. With this outlook, I have been able to cope with great trouble, large and small, whether it was personal or a loss that affected our entire community. If we forget that these pains were meant to be, it is easy to lose ourselves in the grief. If we have faith, if we have hope, we cannot be broken down and our losses will not have happened in vain. Ironically, I made this discovery when I broke down and lost myself in grief for a time. I do not often let my emotion control me, but when setback after setback jumped in the way of my goals, it eventually became too much, and I ran out of my house to take a walk with tears streaming down my face. After about twenty minutes of wallowing in self-pity, I began to reexamine things. I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, and strove for it with all my mental effort. When I reached it, I had found my answer. With hope for the future, with faith in ourselves, pain will never destroy us and we can become who we were meant to be, in time.