Hope can be a wide, warm light guiding your life, or it can be a flimsy straw you’re clinging to, to avoid the pain of uncertainty.
When, time and time again last year, I saw none of my “hopes” become a reality, I gave up. No longer would I hope for anything, since nothing I’d wished for had happened in my son’s legal battle.
I thought I was being wise, letting go, as I sensed my shoulders go down and my fists unclench.
But something was off, because I couldn’t dismiss the feeling in my heart that something more spacious was still possible. Wasn’t this… hope? And wasn’t it pulling me forward, like a magnet?
Yesterday, I understood I’d conflated two types of hope.
Hoping that my son would be released without a conviction and that the world would know he’d been the real victim was a narrow kind of hope, and had the energy of “I hope this happens or else…”––classic Ego.
This wasn’t hope: I was trying to manipulate reality so I could be okay. And anything different would mean ruin.
Hope is large and open, and you uncover it by asking, “what do you hope XYZ for?” until you reach the core truth.
“I hope my son is released from jail without a conviction.”
Q: What do you hope that for?
A: So that he won’t have a criminal record, because he doesn’t deserve it.
Q: What do you hope that for?
A: So that he isn’t permanently marked as someone who did something harmful once.
Q: What do you hope that for?
A: So that people don’t think he’s a bad person?
Q: What do you hope that for?
A: So that he can live freely and not be rejected by society.
Q: What do you hope that for?
A: So that he can become all he can be and contribute his talents and goodness to the world.
This was the real hope I had for my son. It’s expansive, inspired, and aspirational. It allows for possibility.
Because, even after he was released with a conviction, the possibility still exists that he becomes all he can be and contributes his talents and goodness to the world.
This type of hope is worth maintaining.
What expansive, aspirational hope are you letting you guide you?
Love,
Carolina
Carolina Perez Sanz 