Hope, short supply, high demand.

Hope is something in high demand but short supply these days.

With the ever flowing pipe of oil in the gulf getting ready to blanket the Gulf states shore lines (not to mention trail up the Atlantic coast on the currents), to the ever ailing U.S. job market that seems to have the illusion of getting better, only be recounted the next day to reveal that it really is lower than expected. Now it seems, even the Golden Arches of McDonalds has a titanium in the consumables problem, just one more thing to hope for the best but plan for the worst.

This is defintely a challenging time to be in, no matter where on the spectrum you fall. If you own a business sales are down, if your working the pink slip looms, and if your unemployed like the other 10% of your adult neighbors (numbers unadjusted for region) prospects look grim.

So where do you find Hope?

Pandora; Jules Joseph Lefebvre, 1882

In the book I put to press a month or so ago, Masonic Traveler, I delve that question from a philosophical angle. Hope springing from the metaphorical box of Pandora, a demon if you will, sent to antagonize man. The reverse of that idea is that hope was really a foil to the nefarious evil from Pandora’s Box, and was instead a light to mankind. Hope, it seemed had the ability to inspire mankind to see beyond his present state, to imagine a better tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.

As eloquent as that parable of antiquity was, its hard to translate to our real day to day life. We can say we have hope, but in our darkest of recesses, its easy to get lost in the maze of our doubts, fears, and hang-ups.

I hope that Obama and BP fix the problem in the Gulf, but what if….

I hope that the Toxic Shrek glass from McDonald’s is safe, but what about…

Not giving away the parallels I constructed in the book, I did stumble onto a great little article on WikiHow about how to find our hope and nurture it back so that it has a place again to inspire us again.  It was a good little refresher for me to help find my feet.

It helped me put things into perspective, and I Hope it will for you too.