Hope

The idea of resilience is what gives me hope: hope for our world, hope for those I love, hope for the chance to help.  Being resilient means bouncing back when things go wrong, taking your licks and getting right back up again, facing your fears and never giving up, no matter how scared you might be. 

Our hope is constantly tested by the challenges we face and by the hardships we endure.  No one has an easy life.  Life is not supposed to be easy.  The trick is to live a life that may be hard without becoming hard ourselves.  For only those who bend but do not break live within hope, right under its roof.

That being said, it is ridiculous to think we can always make lemonade out of the lemons life gives us.  We can't.  Sometimes life sucker punches us in mouth and all we can do is reel and bleed.  However, if we can remain standing, if we can heal without bitterness, we can live into the hope that is yet to come.

U2 sings that "the sweetest song is the one we haven't heard."  Implicit in this idea is the power of the word "yet."  Each night ends in dawn, and just because we can't yet see the glow on the horizon does not mean that the darkness will last forever.  We haven't yet become the people we need to be to make our dreams a reality, to live our lives as crew rather than passengers.  We will though.  This is what I hope.  And hope leads towards resilience.  And resilience leads towards a life of reaching into the possibility of "yet," shaping this potential into a reality suffused with hope as the sky at dawn is suffused with light.