Li-Hope-fe

 

I was recently reading a story to my daughter at bedtime, about 3 child-scarer monsters who felt bored and useless and landed in prison. Even after completing their term in prison, they didn’t want to leave as they felt hopless, as they didn’t know anything other than scaring people, which they didn’t want to do.  Soon, they find a friend in a new addition in the prison, Nightmare, a tiny little monster.  He was a good story teller and everyone loved to hear his stories.  But he spent most of the time sleeping.  Eager to hear the stories, one day, the 3 monsters combined their terrific cries and woke him up.  To their surprise, he was neither scared nor angry. Instead he thanked them for waking him up early, which he had always wanted to do.  He praised them and said that many sleepyheads would be happy to have them in their lives.  The 3 monsters were amazed to know that they could be of some use and could do something more than what they had believed.  They soon left the prison and started special service to sleepyheads. The moral of the story was that there is always something nice we can do, just waiting to be discovered.

The movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, which I happened to watch as part of my writing journey, reminded me of this story and the power of self-belief and hope.  What is life without hope?  Everything we do in our life, from the smallest of things to the biggest goals of our future are based on this hope that we will have a tomorrow to wake up and move ahead in life, which is again a thing which is absolutely not in our control.  Yet, we keep our hopes alive and moving on with life.

However, when life decides to challenge us, as per its design, in any aspect like physical, mental, financial, emotional or in any other way like our own personal growth, we often get bogged down and start losing our hope.  Many tend to see that as the end of it and sometimes give up, even without attempting to resolve the crisis.   It is in those times, we should strive to keep our hopes alive.  We should believe that if one door is shut, God will definitely open another door.  The door that will be opened may not necessarily be the one we want, but we just need to take the plunge with hope and make the best use of the opportunity.  It doesn’t matter where we are or what or how much we have, but what matters is what we do with what we have. 

Losing hope and giving up or resigning ourselves calling it destiny, is the prison walls which we are creating within our mind.  In such situations, instead of just looking at what is not there or what has been lost, if we just shift our focus to what is there and what other options can be explored, it not only helps in the problem solving, but would also open up new opportunities of growth.  In the process, it also reveals the hidden part of our own potential and capability.  To be able to make that shift, there are enough inspirations in the world, which we can read about or someone probably in our own circles, which can give us the mental confidence and rekindle our hope. 

As one famous dialogue in the movie goes, ‘I guess it comes down to a simple choice. Get busy living or get busy dying’.  With the power of faith in our Creator, I feel, everyone should execute the first choice instead of simply resigning to the second, which would be an insult to our Creator who entrusted us with so many abilities. Let’s discover what’s hidden inside us.