Hope

Hope has long been a part of my vernacular, but in the past 4 months, it has become at nearly the center of most things. I am working on an upcoming Walk to Emmaus with the word HOPE serving as an integral part of the message.

As I interact with more and more people around the word HOPE, I realize that it is truly an important word and attitude in our society, as it resonates for many on a variety of different levels. I have started paying attention to how often I hear the word, how people use it and how people respond to it. It is interesting (in my humble opinion) to see how some people react to the word; in some cases it is almost negative, as it seems to imply for some that there is not a lot of oomph in terms of action behind the belief.

There are a couple of people that I interact with at work that have an almost adverse reaction when the word HOPE is used. I like to watch the reaction when this happens, because it gives me some insight to what makes different people tick and how they handle adversity or anything outside of the "normal" range of expectations. For the most part, the anti-hope people are pretty clinical, live a little more in the black and white and are easy to slide over to the negative side of things. The HOPE peeps tend to be more in the cup is half full camp and can see through adversity with more options or alternatives.

I have not devoted any period of time to really analyzing this and all of my observations are anecdotal, but there does seem common threads in the HOPE vs. no HOPE individuals.

I hope that we can all get to a place where we believe that there is always a positive outcome!