Espoir

The sky against the bright red, orange, and yellow autumn leaves blowing in the playful morning wind created the illusion of an impressionistic water colour painting. The vision put the French word for hope in my mind, espoir. Hope is such a small, humble looking word, and yet it conveys so much power, so much necessity. It is really strange that something invisible like the concept of hope, matters so much when it comes to the flesh and bone reality of our daily lives. Often hope is something we convince ourselves of, an energy and determination we impose on our will, our aspirations and dreams. When we feel those goals are within reach, we are confident our hope is justified. A lot of times, the conviction that our hope is justified is all it takes to keep us going, putting one foot in front of the other, each and every day. The days and times that are hard, is when we lose sight of that elusive wizardry that keeps our energy going. How many challenges have been overcome, how many partially crushed longings and ambitions revived, because we told ourselves that there was hope, in spite of logical evidence to the contrary. Hope seems to be as much an energy we create in our circumstances as it is a real and factual reality. So, hope seems twofold : it comes in real, tangible assistance and relief, and it comes in the invisible force of determination that gives us that jolt that gets us out of a jam we thought we were stuck in. There are many things you can live without. But hope is not one of them. In  its invisible energy form, it allows humans, and animals, too, to survive trials and horrors that without it, would surely have caused surrender and death. Hope might be the most convincing argument yet that the universe has an angle to it that defies rationality, a spiritual dust so to speak, that is sprinkled invisibly on our most dire circumstances to make sure our physical being does not collapse. Hope. It is a beautiful thing. It should have a much grander name, like galaxy boost, or Milky Way Vitamin. This small, oddly enough four letter word, hope , was done an injustice by its ordinary name. Perhaps on purpose, so this planet could learn eventually, that things invisible matter as much as things visible. If you doubt my take on this, study up on the latest theory in astrophysics dealing with dark, or invisible matter.