A couple of days ago I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about a future commitment to something and to my amazement she was hesitant to make any kind of verbal commitment to this arrangement. It did puzzle me for a while because as far as I was concerned it was just a matter of deciding whether this is something she considered doable and go ahead to commit to make it happen but this was not her perspective about the matter.
Later on in the day, I pondered on her actions which I thought were very unrealistic. It dawned on me that human nature wants us to be in control of both the present and the future, while at the same time drawing clear demarcations between the two. Having some kind of verbal commitment would give me a sense of security and guarantee that this thing would get done at the end of the day. When she refused to respond in this manner, I was offended because I thought she did not trust me or herself enough to get this thing done. This was far from the truth as I got to learn later.
Her response was that we take one day at a time and this baffled me for a while. Reflecting on it later, I realized that she was right. It is not enough to simply want to do something, we ought to have the faith and the confidence that it will happen. Hope makes the future real in our hearts and minds. It ceases to be an aspect of the future and becomes a daily reality. As we daily learn to make steps towards that which we envision in our hearts, it daily becomes a beautiful reality. This means that there would be no need to wait for the future because the future would be right here with us.
As much as a promise gives security and guarantee for the future, hope is what will keep you going when everything in you and around you tells you to give up. So what does it mean to take things one day at a time? Does it mean we abandon the big vision and settle for the daily experiences? Absolutely not, it means that we live our daily experiences in light of the big vision and in so doing we will daily add a building block to the big vision. When the vision is fully manifested, we will look back in admiration of every experience that added a building block to this big dream that is now a reality. This is the true essence of living a meaningful life.
There is power in words and it has been said that a person is no better than their word. As much as it is beautiful to keep your word, it is more beautiful to live it out on a daily basis. When we make promises, we often view them as a onetime activity that we need to do and tick off our list of things to do. A promise ought to be something that naturally flows out of you and not a mere activity in your busy schedule. This is only made possible if we have faith and hope in that which we hold as promises. Hope is what will inspire you to go all the way and to make all the necessary sacrifices.
We make so many lists of resolutions that often times we fail to meet because they are no more than mere written promises on a piece of paper. We all can adopt a new approach to setting goals and resolutions by having hope in the reality of these goals and aspirations then moving on to daily making them part of our daily experiences. Every parent has hope that their children will grow up to reach their full potential and that is why many of them will do everything they can to support their children through life. If this same way of thinking and hope pattern is transferred to all the other aspects of our lives, we would achieve more than we could anticipate. Hope makes dead dreams come alive. It is the string that will sometimes swing you across your dead sea. It is the silver lining in the grey cloud. It is that light at the end of the tunnel that inspires you to keep moving. Hope is your door into the future, keep it alive everyday!!
