I Hope...

Sometimes when I get really tired (emotionally or physically) I feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. You can call it despair, depression, disillusionment, or whatever you want, but all I know is that it's strong and it's real.

I would describe it as a period of time where absolutely nothing seems interesting to me. Nothing. Hobbies and activities that I typically enjoy suddenly become about as appealing as uncooked oats in a bowl of water. The simplest tasks become overwhelming, and the larger life problems I’m dealing with get blown completely out of proportion.

It seems to happen less now than when I was younger, but I think that might be because I've gotten better at seeing it coming and I've learned some ways of heading it off at the pass. Sometimes though, it still happens. When it does, I've identified the best course of action for me.

I've found that I need to back up a little bit.

Let me explain. When I look at my life too closely, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the details and lose sight of the big picture. For example, what if you looked at a wall-sized painting from 6 inches away? I'm guessing you would only be able to focus on the one small part of the picture that happened to be right in front of your face. That means you would not only miss out on the rest of the painting, but you would probably have a hard time understanding what the little piece you were looking at had to do with anything else. If you took it a step further and imagined you were in an art gallery, backing up far enough would not only reveal the entire painting in front of you, it would also let you see the other paintings hanging on the walls nearby.

This idea has had a major influence on my life over the past several years, and it's left me deeply fascinated by the relationship between hope and perspective.

If I was the center of the universe and I was having a bad day, that would be bad news for the universe. Thankfully, most of us know we're not the center of the universe, but we do all start life thinking we're the center of our own personal little universe. This leads to all kinds of problems such as (but not limited to): imposing the needs of our universe onto the universes around us, and letting the happenings of our universe be the sole source of information we use to dictate our moods. Sound familiar?

Remember that scene in "Horton Hears A Who", where the camera zooms waaaay out and we see that the world we've been watching is just a speck within a much larger world? That's perspective.

I believe I know the God of the universe and that He is also the center of said universe. I believe that my story is just one small subplot in the much larger story that is all about Him.

When I back up far enough, that's the perspective I find, and that gives me a lot of hope.