Hope

For me, hope is the most important ingredient in recovery. Without hope, I have no desire. Without hope, I have no willingness. Without hope, honesty and open-mindedness does very little. Without hope, there is no faith.

I have been hopeless many times before. Hopelessness is a dark, lonely, cold place. There is nothing to hold onto, nothing to comfort me. Hopelessness is painful, deeply painful.

Paradoxically enough, I do not think I would be alive today if it were not for my addiction. Hopelessness is pure and final; nothing will change it. But my addiction gives me one small hope - that I can change the way I feel, ease the pain, if only a little. I can't always find hope, but I can almost always find a bottle or a pill - something. The paradox of the paradox is that if I continue to look for hope in a bottle, eventually I'll die.

Each time that I've taken a stab at recovery, I have started with a glimmer of hope - a hope that things would be different this time, that I could wake up and step out of myself and learn to live and enjoy this life. I've then done what I thought I needed to do in order to recover. Eventually, the depression, being mostly untreated, would come back, slowly chewing up whatever hope and positive outlook I had gained, until I reached the darkness of hopelessness again.

Today I believe that hope doesn't leave. Those things that are mine by right of being a child of God, like love, hope, joy, peace, faith, acceptance, humility, etc., never really leave; but they can be obscured by trauma, active addiction, and error thinking. In plain English, I can pile a mountain of shit on top of any of my spiritual gifts and obscure them to the point of hopelessness, or even, I suppose, lifelessness.

So those times that I felt hopeless, I really was not; I had backed myself into a corner by my thinking and my actions which led me to believe there was no hope for me.

My re-discovery of hope seems hard-won these past 15 months. It did not come quickly or easily, and I suppose that is probably a good thing. I may be learning what I heard a really long time ago - that nothing truly good comes to us without some effort. Or, better put, I think, is that the recognition and actualization of our true assets takes a good deal of consistent effort.

If hope is something I'll always have, but don't necessarily always recognize, what can I do to uncover hope within me an let it flourish? Gratitude is a good way to start. When I am grateful for all I have and all I am, the gratitude sustains hope. It is helpful to be grateful every day - not only for the seemingly good, but also for the seemingly bad. When I experience the seemingly bad - let's say an illness, a financial setback, an apparent rejection - it is what I do with that experience that determines whether it's bad or not. I can spend all day on that topic; but as it relates to hope, I can know immediately that if I look for the good in the seemingly bad, I will find it (eventually).

Another good way to nurture hope is to give it away. I am extremely blessed to be able to share my story of recovery with others who are just beginning their recoveries. During the day, I can get a little preoccupied with my 'problems' or issues. When I meet someone who is new in recovery and I share my experience, strength, and hope with them, I hardly remember my 'problems'. I recognize that I have very little to gripe about.

A few weeks ago I rode in the MS 150 - a weekend bike ride supporting the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. During the ride, I passed by a car for sale that really caught my eye:

This is a 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. It is in very good condition, and it has 34,000 miles on it. The seller wants $9900 for it; I did a little research, and that's probably a fair price. I would like to purchase this car. If I had around $9000 lying around, I would purchase this car. 

Why do I mention this in a quasi-spiritual blog in a post about hope? Because hope has nothing to do with apparent reality. Hope says I can be different than I am today. Hope says I am prosperous; I simply need to clear away the blocks that are keeping me from realizing it. Hope says that nothing material or spiritual is out of my grasp. In fact, the more outlandish the dream, the better. Half a century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream, and he instilled hope in millions of citizens. He believed that all people deserved to live in freedom, despite a ton of evidence to the contrary. He gave his life for this dream, which is still being brought to fruition today.

Remember how I said that I have had a lifelong belief that I would never be able to handle life? That I'd never learn to care for myself? Hope says find evidence to the contrary and focus on that. It was just about one year ago that I moved out of the halfway house (which I now work at) on my own, and became what I consider a responsible citizen who takes care of himself. I have been doing something for the past year that I have never done before in this lifetime - I have housed myself, clothed myself, fed myself, and maintained myself without having to lean on others for financial support. And during that time I've also paid back debt of over $3000. I am living something that I never thought possible. My reality used to be that I would always be dependent and needy. Today my reality is much different. I carry that with me knowing that even greater things lie ahead for me.

And another thing about hope: I know that if I can do it, anyone can. We're not miserable sinners stuck on a crappy rock for six or seven decades, serving a life sentence with the hope of heaven in the afterlife. Heaven is right here right now, within each one of us. It's a matter of each of us seeking it within ourselves and sharing what we discover with others.

Namaste,

Ken