HOPE

If you find yourself hoping that hope is enough... does that not surely mean that it isn’t? Or doesn’t it? If everything in your life is not the way you want it to be, or how you need it to be, and your “hands are tied”, there really isn’t much you can do about it to change it, what is left? Hope.

All you can do or trying to do is remain positive. You have hope. That one day, someday, things will change for the better and everything will fall into place and what “will be” will be what you’d always wanted, needed and hoped for.

The question is how long do you have to be hopeful for, before your life starts moulding itself into a statue that is pleasing to you? Someone once told me,” You can either be the sculptor, or let others sculpt your life for you.” In order to be the sculptor, one requires the ability to use one’s hands. But how does one go about untying and freeing one’s hands, that are so forcefully bound by the strongest of rope it seems impossible, hopeless to undo the knots?

Do you sit, hands tied, hoping, believing, that if you’re patient enough someone with the adequate ‘untying knots’ skills will come along and set you free? Or do you have to wriggle, struggle, and tug, until the point of bleeding, to loosen the grip? Do you have to violently force your way out of the bondage? Fight, be in pain and anxiously search for a knife to make the task just a little bit quicker, easier?
Or ... do you willingly stand up with your hands tied behind your back? Walk slowly and carefully, trying to maintain your balance, through the vast and open fields not being in control of anything, constantly relying on the generosity, time or kindness of others to do things for you? All the while consciously hoping that you will be kept safe, for if danger were to come along, you are prevented from defending yourself.

How immensely frustrating and vulnerable it is to have your hands tied: the lack of power, control and independence. How claustrophobic. Like being pushed into a corner, surrounded by consistent reminders that this is the position you are in and there is absolutely no way of getting yourself out of it. No matter how hard you wriggle, complain, despise your circumstance... yearn to break loose, crave, itch and ache to have the use of your hands, the only thing you can do, is hope that one day it will not be like this. One day, your hands will be free to pick up the chisel and embark upon creating the marvellous work of art you foresee in your heart and mind. The artwork that you have been designing since you were old enough to think. The life you want to be living. Hopefully someday soon. It is the most natural desire, instinct, ability and privilege of the human race to be blessed with a pair of hands.

When they are taken away, it becomes clearer as to how desperately we need them. And yet there are those admirable, rare examples of strength that were born without them, who manage to achieve success and fulfilment regardless of their disability. If they were involved in an accident and suddenly have to learn to a new way of life without them, so the journey begins, ultimately obtaining a new set of skills that enables them to live happily and comfortably.

Why is it then, that those of us with literally perfect and able hands, which are merely metaphorically tied behind our backs, have such little faith? In our abilities, in our strength and in the power our beings possess? Why is that we have such little determination, why do we wittingly give up, why do we use the situations we find ourselves in as an excuse for not being able to change them? Why do we have such little hope? And if some of us do hope, why isn’t it enough?