EMBRACE HOPE

"Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent."

-- Jean Kerr

Hi Patrice,

I want to share with you the following passage from Howard Zinn that my friend Patricia Cowley sent to me this week. I resonate so deeply with its message.

Reflecting on hope, I was reminded of the myth of Pandora's box. Her box unleashed all of the ills of the world but it also contained hope, as hope is the antidote to those ills. Pandora wisely held onto it. May you keep hope alive and well within your heart.

So thanks to Howard Zinn for these inspiring words from 'The Optimism of Uncertainty':

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.

"If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future.

"The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

~ Patrice

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof."

-- Barbara Kingsolver