Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Hope

Today's food for thought:

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HOPE

Often others seem to feel a special responsibility to puncture our hopes. They say things like “You know he will never learn to read” or “You need to accept he doesn’t know what is going on around him” or “He’s doing well now, but he will reach a plateau.”

They would say we are in denial, that our dreams are “false hopes,” from which we must be protected. God forbid anyone should go around entertaining false hopes! But, in a certain sense, what other kind of hope is there?

Hope is the thing that is willing to take a chance on the future. And who is audacious enough to say what the future will bring? Hope is the capacity to see something on the horizon that we are willing to move toward. If our hope gets us from today to tomorrow, and in that new day we are ready or able to deal with something we thought we couldn’t face, then hope has done its job.

There is a worse thing than false hope. It is no hope.

Changed by a Child

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love it. Sums it up perfectly.

Anonymous said...

Of COURSE Jack knows what's going on around him! And only JACK can decide what he does and does not want to do. There is nothing more astonishing than the human spirit. It's what put us on the moon, goaded us to abolish slavery, and inspired a young woman with autism to figure out a way to communicate with us in a mutual language.

As long as there is LIFE, there are possibilities. It's up to us to define the problem and then think of clever solutions to solve it.

And Ann, I will be 80 years old, and I will think back to you telling me that line about more than half the population qualifying for services, and I will laugh, and laugh, and laugh all over again. Priceless!

6 months down, 6 more to go, and then true freedom for Jack. I'll be counting the days with you...

Anonymous said...

{hugs} Just remember...."those" people don't get it.

Give that boy a kiss from his friends on the road to St. Louis!

Anonymous said...

"There is a worse thing than false hope. It is no hope.
"

Thank you for this Ann.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Ann, I'm reading that book right now, it has a lovely way of putting things.

((((HUGS))))
Julie