Hope: Why You Should Never Throw In The Towel!

Hope, it is said, is the last thing that dies in man. I don’t know about you, I don’t know what you consider of utmost important in life, I don’t know of your social inclinations, of your tribulations, triumphs or moments of great trials. What we must all concur is that we are where we are today because of one single word called “hope”. In some twisted way, I never quite really fathomed the towering role that hope plays in our lives. I had other big ideas, other greater things I wanted in life. I longed for a good education, a good wife, a nice car, a big home, tons of servants at my beck and call and everything in between that made living life a luxury. I, like everyone else, had forgotten the most fundamental thing in life.

I had given a wide berth the concept of hope and what it essentially meant in my life. What I didn’t know was that though unacknowledged, hope drove everything in my life. It was the reason I looked towards a new day, the reason I worked hard, the reason I had this overriding desire to do everything within my power to achieve my goals. Unbeknown to many, most of us are unhappy because we have failed to clearly outline what we want in life. Unfortunately, this affects every facet of our lives. We want an awfully beautiful woman (which is fine by every means) and give little attention to character and personality. We are solely concerned with aesthetics and rarely give thought to what we need for the long term.

We want to get the best education but rarely put efforts to make that education count. We have become a bunch of pretenders to the throne. In simpler terms, our lives are a perfect camouflage of the decisions we make. We strive hard to get admission to a high end university and thereafter engage in sex for marks or become experts at cheating in exams. What happens in the end? We get the degree (papers) we want but lose in getting the education we went there for. In essence, we fail to achieve what we ultimately hoped for. I could go on and on giving examples that mirror our society but that is a story for another day. What is hope? The free online dictionary defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.”

We all have our desires, our expectations, and a list of things we wish or hope to achieve. We are, in essence, driven by hope to go through difficult circumstances, to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and to quintessentially make our lives better. When I view my life in a mirror lens, I see that everything in my life is a total summation of the hope I’ve had and have, of my innermost desires to make my life better, and ultimately the expectations I have. Take a look at those who are in hospitals, those who are maimed and within an inch of their lives, those who have no food to eat but still soldier on, those who have tarmacked for a job with no success, those who have been hurt, those who are homeless, the destitute, the downtrodden and many more. What is the common denomination?

In all of them, what keeps their dream alive is the hope for a better tomorrow, the belief that things will be better even in the midst of a storm. These are people who are not about to be defeated by what life throws at them. they have hope that things will change for the better, that any tribulations they are facing is temporary and that tomorrow is always a good day. They do not look at their tribulations, their sufferings or their shortcomings as a permanent incarceration but rather a temporary one. In life, whether rich or poor, perfectly healthy or bed ridden, incapacitated or in perfect state, white or black, tall or short, the truth of the matter is that without hope we are walking dead. We are simply a shell of our former selves, a shadow of what we once were. 

Don’t lose sight of what you want in life, don’t give up on a friend who needs your support, a partner who has stood by you in good and bad times, an employee who has espoused the potential to turn things around if given the chance, a person who looks up to you. Be steadfast, trust in God, hope for the best but don’t lose track of the current tribulations. Make your life worthwhile even if things seem not to go your way. With hope you can overcome the worst of tribulations, overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, and achieve your dreams. When things get hard as sometimes they would, don’t lose HOPE!