Humming Bird's Wings of Flight

Last night I experienced what I might call my first anxiety attack about my decision to return to school this fall to embark on obtaining another degree. 

Here's what I learned when I quieted myself enough to connect to what I am feeling as September looms:

 

As the panic dances on the tip of each nerve

I feel a zillion laser beams shooting outward to the very outer edge of my being.

Each as tight as a violin string vibrating like a humming bird's wings.

If one breaks the music will stop.

And so, I know, I must allow the silent tension to pull me forward ~ 

Hope and Being at Peace

I am thinking of late about different hope definitions in relation to my own actions, thoughts, feelings, and relationships. In particular, I am thinking about how hope guides my thoughts, actions, feelings, and relationships as I move forward in time. 

First, let me share with you the three hope definitions that I rely on.

Stephenson (1991) defines hope as “a process of anticipation that involves the interaction of thinking, acting, feeling, relating, and is directed toward a future fulfillment that is personally meaningful".

 Dufault and Martocchio (1985) describe hope as “a multidimensional dynamic life force characterized by a confident yet uncertain expectation of achieving a future good which, to the hoping person, is realistically possible and personally significant".

Jevne (1994) describes hope as enabling individuals to envision a future they are willing to participate. I like to add 'envision and work toward' a future in which they can participate with interest.

In each of these definitions there is a sense of moving toward a desired or good future as determined by the individual. In preparation for a paper that I am working on, I have been reading how different philosophers, beginning with Aristotle, describe this movement toward what is determined to be good. 

So this morning, I asked myself, 'How do I determine what is good for me?' Of course I believe how I determine what is good for me has been and is learned from my experiences along the way. So I expect that this whole posting might be different if I wrote it yesterday or tomorrow. Having said that, I came up with the following - "BEING AT PEACE" with who I am and becoming (Greene, 1995) is critical to my hope (and hopeful self). When I am not feeling at peace with what has happened in the past, present or what I envision might happen in the future as a result of my past or present, then I do not feel hopeful. Having just discovered this about myself, I believe that what happens then is that I search for thoughts, actions, and relationships that help me feel more at peace and as a result more hopeful.

Thinking about this as I post this blog, I would add that, Mahatma Ghandi's quote:

Whenever you are in doubt, apply the following test: recall the face of the poorest and weakest person you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to them.

is of late has been a huge determining factor in whether or not I feel at peace/hopeful.

HOPE KIDS NAIT Summer Camp

Here's what I've been up to since my last posting....

http://www.inews880.com/Channels/Reg/LocalNews/Story.aspx?ID=1115430

Hope Stories

Here's something you might like to see. Grade nine students at McCauley School have the texts of their digital stories published in the local paper. Check them out at:

edmontonexaminer.com/Community/Articles.aspx?id=3150&catname=hope+at+McCauley+school

Telling Our Stories

Last Thursday I heard a high school student tell a group of adults around a table discussion that one of the barriers she feels to attending school is that there are few opportunities to tell her story. What she would like others to know is how difficult it is to ask her grandmother for bus money. She is afraid to hear what she knows in her heart. If she gave up on her dream of becoming a welder there would be less stress on her grandmother and family. However, giving up is not an option for this determined young lady who asked us to consider the consequences. As a hopeful person, she want others to HEAR her story so that she can continue to imagine and work toward the day when she can pay for her own bus pass. For "when we hope we detach ourselves from the story of our lives up to now. . . .The hopeful person is on the boundary between old formulations of the self and new formulations not yet born (Barnard, 1995, p. 50).

I believe we have a responsibility to find a way to do what the adults at Eastglen High School did for this young lady. They created a space for her to courageously put her hope of becoming a welder for others to hear even though she prefaced it with, "You might thing this is crazy, but I love helping my grandfather weld and so..."

I left the table asking myself what is the smallest thing I can do to support her hope? Perhaps allowing her story to become part of my story is a start to knowing what I need to do next!

While Hoping for a Cure

Below are some of the hopes that participants at a "Diabetic Peer Support Hope Retreat" named after participating in hope activities. I wanted to share them with you because on the first night together the theme centered around hopes for a cure. By the third day together, the participants' hopes had shifted and that elevated my hope. When I saw them at a follow-up session, three weeks later, the first thing I heard one participant say to another was, "Do you want to walk with me three times a week at the mall?" Another participant shared what he has been collecting in his hope bag since we last met. 

- I hope I will be more knowledgeable for tomorrow.

- I hope we'll understand each other better.

- I hope I can keep my eyesight.

- I hope we can help the Youth Diabetic Prevention Project.

- I hope I can control my cholesterol and blood pressure in choosing foods more closely in my diet.

- I hope I can understand more about diabetes and hope that someday there will be a cure.

- I hope I will live better.

- I hope I am becoming a healthy person to help others.

- I hope I can control my blood sugar level by exercising and sticking to healthy foods.

- I hope I will feel better about myself.

- I hope I exercise three times this week.

- I hope I will see some changes in the near future.

- I hope I can learn more about diabetes and practice caution.

Hope Notes

I found this quote while reading about the importance of stories as a way to find meaning in our lives ~ 

"Hope is born while facing the unknown and discovering that one is not alone."

Need I say more?

(Austin MacCurtain, in a review of John Updike's Self-Consciousness that appeared in The [London] Times Literary Supplement,as quoted by Martin Marty in Context 21:15 (15 August 1989), p. 3.