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HOPE
by Golden Eagle
Hope is probably the most important thing for sufferers of mental illness to have. The opposite of hope is despair, and it is despair that makes us sit around and sink in to ourselves, or worse, suicidal. After my first and only suicidal attempt, I told my therapist all about it, and she said that the ones who survived the concentration camps are the ones who never gave up hope, however slim their chances of survival seemed, and seeing their family and friends daily dying. She also said that I would be much stronger at the end of it, and she was right, though I found it very hard to believe her at the time.
Hope is one of the three main Christian Virtues, along with Faith and Charity, or Love. In the Greek Myths, it was Hope that was left trapped behind when Pandora opened her box and let out all the evils of the world. It is Hope that will lead us to Joy and the Mad Dance. Whatever large and dark cloud you seem to be stuck in, it has a silver lining. There is a very old song about a ram who tried to butt a whole in a dam, and an ant who tried to move a rubber tree plant. In the end, they both succeeded because they had Hope. There’s a more recent one that goes, “I’ve been down so goddamn long, that it looks like up to me”. Hope gives us the strength and courage to fight our demons and helps us to recover.
If you truly hope for the best, you will not worry or be anxious about anything. Hope is a truly powerful quality. It can eliminate an awful lot of negativity.