I’m hoping this new blog will be a good place to journal my thoughts. I’ll work hard not to overshare, whine, or make too many proclamations. Here goes: I’m picturing hope right now, and visualizing how each of use carry hope around with us most of the time. I see mine in a bucket which unfortunately is lost among boxes and bins around the house anticipating either a move or a change.

I remember what mine looks like though, its all wood, with staves, hoops, and a rope handle, kind of an old time well bucket. The rope handle is smooth in the middle and still fuzzy with rough fibers around the loops in the handle. Too much detail, never mind.

Anyway if hope is like rain, sometimes it pours and overflows and sometimes it runs a bit dry. When someones hope is full up, you can tell by seeing it in their face, they smile easily, their eyes are bright, and they speak with an energy and enthusiasm that actually shares their hope with others.

But if rain is just a metaphor for hope, what is hope itself? The dictionary says its a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, a feeling of trust, or a wanting of something to happen. I’d like to consider those a bit.

The feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen seems to be a good overall definition. We usually hope for the best because, lets face it, if we hope for the worst it converts hope to dread, we don’t want that. So as the hope bucket fills, we have more expectations of things to happen, we look forward to them, and when we have many options, we have a full bucket. Whats good about the many option approach is that it increases our emotional resilience I think. When we’re down to just one or two options and they fall through the cracks in the bucket, well our spirit tends to fall with them.

Trust as one of the definitions surprised me. It implicitly assumes two parties are involved in the hope, and if trust is broken, well the hope just pours out of our bucket until we can find another way to trust. Thats why i think of my bucket as an old water well bucket with staves being held together by hoops. I wonder what all the names of the staves are? If trust is one, optimism might be another, faith might be one, aspiration, and maybe love, what do you think?

The wanting something to be the case part of the hope definition is trickier for me, I talk myself into hope on a regular basis, and lately find that that the thing i’m hoping for wont happen. That hits the optimism stave pretty hard and if a person isnt careful, all your hope will leak from the bucket pretty quickly.

One of the other curious definitions of hope has to do with the faith stave. The idea goes something like this, Faith says something is so right now, while hope says it could happen in the future. I think if we break the faith stave, it becomes pretty hard to hold hope in the bucket.

All this is to say if you have any spare hope, know how to repair and old water well bucket, send your knowledge my way, I’m needing a repair on my bucket and a refill.

Be safe, share your hope, and keep your bucket well maintained.