What do you hope for this coming year?
Seven Questions for the New Year – Part 1
From Caroline’s 2012 Salon
I prefer going down a path of wonder, hope, and possibilities. I can see quite clearly that our world is spinning in potential flames and chaos. But I am also mindful that I need to make my own decision as to where and how I invest my own consciousness, much less my time and creative energy, each day and it is on behalf of that theme that I dedicate this first Salon. I thought I would ask you the same questions that a group of my close friends asked each other as we approached midnight on New Year’s Eve. We wanted to generate a rich discussion among ourselves. We wanted to stir our own inner pots, so to speak, to see what was brewing inside. Like a self-styled, spontaneous retreat, we pursued these questions in a spontaneous manner but they resulted in reshaping how we thought about the way we would travel through the new year. Perhaps they will do the same for you.
Question One: What do you hope for this coming year that is different from other years?
This was a very thought-provoking question as it required that we consider first of all if we were harboring something deep within us that we were “hoping” for, either consciously or unconsciously. Were we hoping for a change in our lifestyle or for a new relationship, or in one case, for a divorce to finally happen? Before we even opened up that discussion, however, we talked about the nature of hope itself. What is hope and what does it mean to invest hope into something or to decide that something is hopeless? Does it matter, for example, to hold in your heart or mind the value decision that a situation in your life is hopeless?
So, we went around asking each other if we had any inner situations that we had already listed as “hopeless” in our hearts and surprisingly, everyone did. Situations that got onto the “hopeless” list included relationships that had reached the end stage and illnesses in the family that had reached the terminal stage.
But one friend said in a type of sad voice that she realized she felt hopeless about her ability to feel positive about new possibilities in her life, given her age. She is now 67-years-old. We laughed and said that 67 is the new 47, but still we could feel her sense of hopelessness spill into the psychic field as she released her feelings now that we were speaking about the unspeakable – aging in a society that is age phobic. What should she invest hope in, she wondered? Should she open herself to thinking that she could actually meet someone and fall in love again? Should she dare even open that door? Should she ignite hope in her heart that she could emerge from her well-known pattern of seclusion and find a new community of friends?
Naturally we encouraged her, for what is the grace of hope about if not for igniting cosmic sized dreams to lift off? And, as one among us so dryly pointed out, hopelessness is not a viable alternative.
One among us was hoping to move forward with a divorce. She had danced around her plans for divorce for years. Again, our dry-witted member reminded her that hoping for a divorce rarely got anyone to court. She had to help hope along with a commitment to action. Then she added that she was “hoping” that this dear friend would follow through with this divorce – which, by the way, she has.
Hope is a powerful grace, a potent force that keeps us going through changes that we just don’t think we can endure. But we do.
Hopelessness, on the other hand, is devastating. I think we all need to reflect on whether we have unconsciously committed parts of our dreams to the category of “hopeless” and if so, let me encourage you to review that category in your heart to make certain you really want to think about that part of your life as “hopeless” forever.
