Hope

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
what is most important is invisible to the eye.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

The Little Prince has always been one of my favorite books. Depending upon the translation, it’s not always the most readable of books … but the truths in it have always screamed for my heart’s attention. It has reminded me of what it means to live from the heart … completely abandoned, unashamed, and vulnerably open.

Too often we lose the hope … we forget that there is always more to discover … about ourselves and the world around us. We forget that there is more to dream about. We forget to fling open the doors of our hearts.

Hope is something that rises up inside us with a gentle strength that requires a response. We either respond to it with our hearts or we try to push it down. Trying to push it down is useless … hope is tenacious … hope always finds us. We can either accept its reality … or we can keep slamming the door. We can either open ourselves to the hunger of hope … and the hurt of shattered hopes … or we can continue to battle hope as the enemy. Which is greater … the pain of a hope that wasn’t fulfilled … or the loss of hope itself?

Hope isn’t a peaceful, ordered affair. It is full of chaos, of longing, of wanting, of waiting. Hope is a painful process. There are those who will tell us that a posture of openness and childlike dreaming is utterly ridiculous. They warn us of our impending disappointment. They seldom mention the incredible joy of living a live saturated in hope. They seldom acknowledge that hope nourishes the soul. And they seldom reap the benefits of the overwhelming exhilaration of hope achieved.

I want to be vulnerable, wild, courageous, strong, playful, thirsty, noble, gutsy. I want to have the courage to let hope rule my thoughts. I want to end each day knowing that I lived it with hope and with an open heart.