Hope in this day and age seems a much maligned feeling. Yet we deal with levels of mental illness that have never been known before. Stress related illnesses are our biggest killers, and yet we are admonished to be realistic, be rational. How realistic is it to say that we should be rational first and foremost? It seems a socially perpetuated falsehood at best. We are feeling people. We even engage in intoxicants and get on prescription meds because we are told to be realistic, to control our feelings, to accept life as it is because it’s the only way we will be happy. I honestly don’t know very many happy people, and those who are happy aren’t as happy as they could be. Hope is our very spirit itself. They say hope springs eternal. It does. It’s the part of us, perhaps the only part, that really endures through life.

Look at Japan. A very rigid “realistic” society. They are good people, but they do what we do just more adamantly and their suicide rate is one of the highest in the world. How much gets done if no one lives to do it? How productive are we when distracted by our own despair and depression? I find I can identify depressed people in the workplace rather easily. They either move listlessly and have seriously impaired focus, or have over compensated with a stimulant and are jittery and often unpleasant to deal with. They aren’t bad people, but they haven’t been given the means to deal with life and have lost hope.

Where is this hope to come from? Inside, internally, but what in us can give us hope? We hear criticisms of the things that most motivate us, but if you find hope in my words it’s because it’s in you. I’m just pointing it out.

There is a truth in life. We work, and we don’t know why. We seek relationships, and we don’t think them out. We suffer and endure it because we are taught to believe we should. We work to increase production and to become a part of society, and society isn’t a nurturing parent. It as a whole doesn’t care. They often say one person can be wise, but a crowd is foolish. We see the evidence of that every day.

Does society as a whole exist as a real entity? It exists in institutions that have either lost sight of hope or never had it. It exists as an economy that doesn’t base its idea of success on the greater good. We are connected. We will have a society one way or another, but society doesn’t get better on its own. The hope of a nation is built on individuals. The politicians give lip service to that, but we as citizens need to see it. Perhaps we should make the promises real on our own?

I’m advocating personal responsibility, true community. I am not saying that any one person can or should say what another should hope for, but we share our hopes or we share our despair. And so far it’s the lobbyists, those who put the commercials on TV, who do influence government most. When you see someone who has hope, do you despair or does it show what you can do? Is anyone brought low by hope?

Rome prospered for so long on one idea, and they still use it today. Give the people what they want. Today, they even tell them what they want. The people get the stuff, and are unhappy. Bread and circuses are fine, and then they go home to no real change. Hope starts with us, and hope starts not with knowing the world. You can know the world really well and often just end up with the world on your shoulders. Hope starts with knowing yourself.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~