Chapter 42: Hope

I have been absent for a while. Absent from this blog, but more importantly, absent from my life. It’s like I went for a hike through the forest one day and got lost. Rather than try to find my way out, I sat down and waited. Waited, and waited, and waited never realizing that nobody knew I was lost, therefore, nobody was trying to find me. I stayed in one spot waiting to be found; stayed through the heat and the rain, the cold and the wind, the change of seasons until finally, I woke up. Realizing that I had been waiting over a year to be found, I knew that my only way out would be to find an exit myself. So now I’m on my feet again, navigating the labyrinth of a dark forest, determined to make my way back to the light. I know I’ll find the edge and return to a thriving life; I just don’t understand why it took so long for me to rescue myself. Perhaps it was hope – the intangible object around which my life revolves. 

Hope. It’s what makes people believe in good, have faith for something better, it’s what keeps people from permanently falling apart. Hope. The one, sometimes tiny detail, that pushes a person further when giving up seems to be the only thing left to do. Hope – it kept me curled up in a fetal position, lost, crying, and waiting to be found. 

But sometimes, hope is deceiving. Sometimes not being found results in a feeling that hope has failed you, hope has lied, and maybe even, hope isn't real at all. Maybe the curious dichotomy that exists with hope has something to do with the entrapment of it in Pandora’s jar. Had hope escaped with the rest of humanities’ evils, then it too would cause destruction; it would carry with it the necessary evil to cause people to do one thing based on what result they thought it would have on something else. Instead, hope remained in the jar, trapped upon Pandora’s fear, remaining somehow pure. 

I don’t know what it is about hope, but I do know that I’m a believer of the good it holds rather than the evil it brings. I do know that it remains the central theme to the parable that is my life. I do know that I need it, that hope is what gets me through the tough times even if, in the end, it was hope that led me to believe in a different outcome. While I hoped to be rescued from the floor of a metaphorical forest, I also hope to find my way out on my own. While I hope for the sun to shine on the path I am to take, I also hope to engage the world around me and learn from what it has to offer. 

I have shed the layers of my past, like breadcrumbs on a trail, but with no intention to ever follow them back to the dark spot in the forest from which I came. They are simply there to remind me of the influence they once held; the kind of hope they once represented. I am still journeying through this forest, looking for the way out, and as my scenery changes, so does my hope. 

Until Next Time,

Courtney Chivon