It's OK to just PRACTICE

It’s ok to practice hope.

We live in a land overflowing with fine looking finished products. We don’t know how they get here. We don’t see the process. We don’t do the work. We just show up to see the beautiful packages and to pay our money and walk away.

When’s the last time you went to a dump?

What about a farm?

A vegetable garden?

A clothing factory?

You get my drift.

Hope isn’t something you can buy though . . . so…

I think this discourages us because we are SOOOO disconnected from the process - from the mistakes that get made, from the time, the sweat, the real people who do the work to get us the stuff we want.

I think we are disconnected from our own processes too.

It takes time, work, learning, effort, sweat, failure . . . and more, to grow some hope.

So if you are like me, and you are growing a fragile and potentially failing crop of hope, YAY!!

I just read the book “Dune” by Frank Herbert. It came highly recommended so I gave it a shot. I can’t tell you the main character’s names or the planets or name of the guy that betrays the other guy . . . but I was moved by the way a mother and son practiced facing fear.

In the MIDDLE of being terrified, they would say:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Ohhhhhhhhh…. Shiver me timbers! There’s enough there to write a master’s thesis, and I don’t understand it all. But what I DID get from it was this dogged pre-determination that fear will NOT be the thing to separate them from their future. They faced it. They

It’s powerful.

Fear is the “little death.” Wow.

I tend to think big. Black and white. All or NOTHING. In or out.

When really, life is a series of little lifes, little deaths that we choose or run from. It’s not one and done.

So practice hope. Open up the DEPT. of HOPE DEVELOPMENT in your life. Daily. Fail trying to hope. Fall down choosing hope. Worry your face off all day but end the day saying “NO” to worry. Worry for half the day. A quarter of the day.

Write your own “HOPE declaration.”

Develop a practice of HOPE. Just like my new friends from Dune had a practice of facing fear. Go to work on hope. Hope isn’t going to show up some magical day in your life looking like a beautiful package. It’s probably going to look awkward, broken, and ugly. But that’s ok! You have the behind the scenes view - you can see all the issues and shortcomings and mistakes.

I will hope. Fear is a liar and a mind closer. Hope doesn’t change my situation, but it changes me. I will see with hope. I will speak with hope. I will judge with hope.

I don’t have my declaration all done, but it’s a start. What about you?

It’s ok to practice. Look at something frustrating with HOPE eyes. Repeat your declaration. Does anything happen?

Happy practicing.