hope floats

on monday, i wrote a bit about this time of year. about reflection and introspection and trying to figure out an end-of-2009 blog entry. [please note: this isn’t that entry.]

monday’s post contained a quote about happiness that, unexpectedly, sparked some debate in the comments section. some loved the concept, some did not and, ultimately, its interpretation is totally subjective. but within that discussion was a comment that my brain keeps revisiting. matt said, with regard to wanting vs. hoping, “hope is a pretty powerful and positive force.”

and i have to agree. it really can be.

new year’s eve is often one of the hardest days/nights of the year for me. it ranks up there with valentine’s day and my birthday in terms of melancholy and loneliness. and, with each passing year, it gets more difficult.

on new year’s eve, and over the preceding days, i look back on the previous 12 months and, though i acknowledge the good things that happened, i see my failings, my mistakes, my missteps and my shortcomings lit up like casino marquees on the vegas strip. i think about where i was the previous december (or february or june) and where i’ve wound up and realize that, despite whatever plans i made or dreams i dreamed or goals i set, somehow my problems have remained the same and i am not where, nor whom, i wanted to be. i always try not to let those feelings take over, but they nonetheless manage to wrap themselves around me with the deliberate, suffocating embrace of a hungry python.

then, because gloom spirals feed on those sorts of emotions, my mind dwells. i start to wonder how many more of these new year’s eves (or valentine’s days or birthdays) are in my future. it’s been this way for so long that i start to fear this is how it will always be... and before i know it my chest has tightened and tears are welling in my eyes and i’m sitting on the couch, alone, amid the echoes of cheers and laughter from neighbouring houses or apartments when the clock strikes midnight.

but one precious thing keeps me from drowning in the murky waters of my own fears and doubts and sadness: hope.

because every december 31st, without fail, i hope.

every year, i hope that, no matter how much i’ve messed things up, no matter how uncertain i am, no matter how panicked i might be and no matter how lost i feel, better things lie ahead.

every year, i hope that my life will change in the ways i need and want it to change.

every year, i hope that i will change in the ways i imagine i can.

every year, i hope for contentment and joy and peace and love, inwardly and outwardly.

every year, i hope for the ability to better roll with life’s punches... just in case that contentment and joy and peace and love prove elusive.

and, every single year, i hope that, in all the best possible ways, my year to come will be different from those that have passed before.

maybe it’s true that too much wanting can cause despair. but i don’t know that the same can be said of too much hoping.

because, even though wanting things i do not have may prevent me from being fully awash in happiness on new year’s eve, it’s the hope for those things that actually keeps me afloat.