That Thing With Feathers

Hope.

I love this word. It encompasses everything you need to feel when thing aren't going well. It seems to tease you and promise you that things will get better. They generally do get better. I love the fact that you can still feel hope when nothing seems to be going right.

I hold onto to it when going through a particular rough patch.

Hope for me means, I'm able to go through a whole day, confident that I'm doing my best to appreciate each moment. Reading a book on a particularly bad day, singing when I want to be crying, loving when I should be letting go. I've learned that if you give into Despair and sometimes even Sadness, it becomes to take effect in your life and you prevent yourself from really enjoying the blessings that are poured into your life.

One of my favorite poems is by Emily Dickinson, and it is really well known but I will put it in here, because she really knew what she was talking about;

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune--without the words,

And never stops at all,

 And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

I've always been a bit confused at how this poem ends, but I think I have come to my own interpretation of it. Hope will never ask you for anything, it is there for you to grab and take a hold of it. It is something beautiful that is there to embrace if you ever need it. Sometimes we may not understand it, particularly when it has to do with something that is bringing us pain but we long and hope for it. It will always be there, and sometimes it is our choice to take advantage of it.