Despair Blinds Us, Hope Gives Us Eyes.

It has been said that love is blind. Any reasonably intense emotion will blind us. Have you ever been standing at your pantry door looking for the salt whilst in an intensely flustered state? Where’s the salt? Right in front of you! Did you see it? No!!! Why? Because any form of intense emotion, whether it be anger, frustration or despair blinds us. On the other hand, positive good feeling emotions open our eyes! We can see again!

Despair is an extension of fear. Fear of the future, fear of uncertainty. Despair also tends to influence where we focus on our timeline. In despair, we tend to focus on how things used to be. How good things used to be, and even more so how things are no longer the way they used to be. By focusing on the past, we are blind to new possibilities. Hope, on the other hand, opens our eyes to the future. Typically, hope is defined as having a positive expectation of our future. Hope is having something to look forward to which in turn adds energy and vibrancy to what we are doing right now. How’s your last day at work when you are about to go on holiday? There is great power in having something to look forward to.

Hope gives us eyes on many levels. The more we have to look forward to the richer our daily lives become. Clearly, we need more than just an annual holiday to look forward to, or whenever we have a holiday break. For most people that is only four to six weeks of the year. More is needed to live an emotionally healthy life.

There are two kinds of hope.

1. Micro-hope.
2. Macro-hope.

Micro hope is having various activities and experiences we can look forward to on a weekly basis. Macro hope is looking forward to bigger picture stuff. Whilst holidays may be part of this bigger picture, this may also include lifestyle changes, or geographical changes, or health and finances changes and so on.

Micro hope focuses on the immediate future. On a weekly basis. Micro hope is experienced via rituals and hobbies which sing to our souls and raise our spirits. For example, I love running. It has been a hobby of mine for many years. I look forward to how it makes me feel. I love how it can be relaxing or can be challenging or it can be a mode of connecting with mother nature, my thoughts or another running companion. Ideally, we all need a ritual that turns our energy on. This hobby ideally would be a reflection of what comes naturally for us. Something that connects to our innate abilities and talents.

Further examples are that you may be a naturally creative person. This may draw your attention to a wide scope of creative expression maybe via abstract art, or some other kind of expression that loads your creative muscle much to your delight.

You may be a musical person. You can hold a tune or you have a deep connection to a playing piano or whichever musical expression resonates with your heart. You may be a strong intellectual. You find great satisfaction in solving complex problems. An intellectual hobby may be an online course, a philosophy program or some kind of maths club (dear me!). You may be a physical person (me!) and you feel great fulfillment from a certain type of physical movement. A physical movement which feels rhythmical, melodic and gratifying. That is what running is for me.

Micro hope can also be social rituals. For example, at home, Thursday nights is our pizza night. Thoroughly love it on many levels. The tasting level, the wine level, the connection level and the fun level…all with my sons. My wife hates pizza…oh my! You may have a movie night, wine night or any other form of social gathering which gives you something to look forward to.

When we can have many experiences and activities on a weekly basis to look forward to this gives us eyes. Eyes for the immediate future. Macro hope gives us eyes for the bigger picture. Take away all hope and we have nothing. It has been said we all need someone or something to love. If we have no one or nothing to love, we need something to do. If we have nothing to do, we need something to hope for. Viktor Frankl had hope. Incarcerated in one of the worst concentration camps in history during world war 2, he had no one to love, no one to love him, he had nothing to do, other than what he may have been forced to do. The only thing going for him was the one thing nobody could ever take away…hope. He was driven by the vision (hope) of surviving these extreme conditions so he could then share with others how he overcame such extremes.

Hope is the oxygen to our emotional and spiritual lives. Without it, a void is created. Nature doesn’t like voids. Voids are always filled up with something. Despair fills in the void where there is no hope perceived. As soon as despair takes over we have taken our eyes off the future. Despair has a heaviness. It carries blindness. A disconnection to future potential.

Despair blinds us. Hope gives us eyes.

Find more about this article in Episode 46 of Insights with Joe Pane | the Podcast