Keep hope strong or disease sets in.
A “Broken Heart” study and its results was once published in the New York magazine. The study researched the mortality rate of 4,500 widowers within 6 months of their wives’ deaths.
The findings? The widowers had a mortality rate 40% higher than all the other men of the same age. Hope and survival had been found to be inseparably connected in this study.
We can live several weeks without eating. We can live a few days without water. We can live only minutes without oxygen.
But, without hope? You may hardly survive a second!
Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
Daniel Webster defines hope as “desire with expectation of fulfillment.” To hope is to expect, to anticipate. It’s possessing within ourselves the vision of a future where our desire is achieved.
I like Wikipedia’s definition better:
“Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.”
In times of chaos, such as in the ongoing pandemic, we all need hope to live for. It’s a proven reality that Hope must be present or disease sets in.
The big question is, “What does it take to make ourselves full of hope?”
It can be observed that things don’t suddenly or instantly change in the externals. Hope moves around first in the mind. In there, we plant seeds of thought of hope and insight.
These planted seeds of hope and awareness then later grow into action. Such is the nature and dynamic of process in psychotherapy and counseling.
This is the best way to survive on our present struggling, lonely planet battling Covid. It’s all worth the risk and effort it takes. The alternative, self-appointed misery, is not an option at all.
Psychiatrist Dr. M. Scott Peck said that to keep hope strong is to face rather than avoid problems. In his book, “The Road Less Traveled,” he writes:
“Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually … It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.”
Keep hope strong or disease sets in.
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