Dear Reader,
This week we drove to Melbourne to see one of our friend going through a bit of low in his life. Surprisingly life has been fairly good to him lately. He and his wife have just welcomed their second grandchild, their son got a new job and a new house, their younger son announced his engagement, and their bother-in-law went through a successful organ transplant operation. And yet, he can’t pull himself out of a cycle of anxiety and depression.
He blames lockdowns for his condition. Lack of human contact has left him in a state of despair that doesn’t seem to go away even with the promise on the horizon.
What COVID has done for some people is stripped of their hope.
We all need hope to live. Hope is what keeps us going. Hope says that the world is a beautiful place, life is young and good things are waiting to happen.
Hope says, come on; there are things to be done, things only you can do, stories only you can tell.
Even when it seems like everything is going downhill, hope can be rock bottom which can thrust us upwards.
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is to live inside that hope. - Barbara Kingsolver
I love Barbara’s quote. I love the notion that I have the control over hope. I have never let go of the hope even when things were pretty grim. A simple way I learned to keep the hope alive is to write it down on a piece of paper, put it in a dream box and let the universe take care of it. The technique never failed me and I have a pretty big dream dream box as well.
There is another side of hope which I quite like as well - “to do something without hope.”
Austin Kleon wrote about a quote by Isak Dinesen that Raymond Carver used to love. Isak Dinesen, said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair.
It has become my motto for my “100 Days” experiment. I didn’t expect anything when I posted something on social media for 100 days consecutively. Since I didn’t expect anything, I was very relaxed about it and had a lot of fun doing it. Now I am writing 100 Articles and doing 100 watercolour paintings and I am amazed by the growth I have experienced in the short time.
I have published my second short story, Aunt Olivia, on my website.
Here are the link to this week’s articles.
Why I Want To Write Fiction In 2021
3 Habits Of A Sophomore Writer
Why I Am Not Intimidated By A Blank Page And Why You shouldn’t Either
Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, and the National Gallery
I Posted On Social Media For 100 Consecutive Days (And Now I Am Addicted)
Enjoy!
That’s it from me this week.
Take care.
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You’re right about hope and how it uplifts us to move forward but it’s also very true that when we do something with no hope at all , the freedom and relaxation we feel .I’ve learn recently to just enjoy life daily with not have too much of a high expectation for anything that will drive me into despair . Thanks for this Neera