Hope – a magic lever for best health. Hope = optimism, expecting good results next. Hope feeds resilience. Spiritual strength contains hope. A key differentiator among those with chronic illness is less the degree of disability or pain, but the presence or lack of hope. For myself, when hope is absent, I feel much worse – a direct correlation. Sometimes it’s hope that my situation can change. Sometimes it’s faith that I can adapt to a growing challenge. Mostly, I feel that I’m blessed with a reservoir of hope. It’s in my DNA. I had nothing to do with it. The opposite of hope is despair. Many, many people with chronic illness despair, have little or no hope. For me the people around me have the biggest influence in my maintaining or rediscovering hope. When I lack hope, lack optimism, I do a mental check of who I spend my time with – personal and business – and increase the time with those who feed my hope. I give thanks to those people. Couldn’t do it without them.
Hope – Magic Lever of Best Health
Yes! So to the point and true–and applicable to every area of my life. I do a lot of political/spiritual work–have been fasting one day a week since June 2013–sending weekly updates to my peace group and interested friends and making calls to Defense and State Depts, the White House and my elected reps about closing Guantanamo Bay Prison and ending force-feeding, and releasing all prisoners except those who can be quickly charged and tried in the Federal Court system. Hope that I can see what I want happen–justice done, an end to torturers and the torturers held accountable, and our nation restored to some kind of redemptive action to preserve our Democracy–that hope is part of what keeps me at this. Today’s my weekly fast day, and I was particularly upset by details of force-feeding I’ve been reading in a Rolling Stone article about prisoner Tariq ba Odah, so this was very much on my mind today.
Thanks…I needed that!!