Coping with a 'drought'

During the depression in the 1930s the drought left huge American wheat fields and other crops barren, but there was also a drought of hope with the result of a nation on its knees. Hope, history shows, is a very important ingredient for a people to cope and navigate the many twists and turns living a life entails. "Without a progressive vision, men dwell carelessly" a wise man wrote, but without hope, does mankind have enough motivation to want to dwell at all?    Every morning Dwight, a 10 year old boy living in an orphanage dresses up in his best clothes,  packs his small tattered bag and waits by the window. He has been doing so since he was 5 years old and when asked: "Why don't you give up, who's gonna come, whats the point?", Dwight  just answers; "It can happen, it can happen".  In good times it can be easy to become complacent and take much for granted, to forget that in the blink of an eye, everything can change for the worse, similarly, in bad times it can also be easy to loose hope and remember that everything can change for the better in the blink of an eye.

Equilibrium, whatever that may be for each of us, having it disturbed facilitates the opportunity for change. Victor Frankl, a holocaust survivor and the author of "Man's search for meaning" wrote: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” We may not always be able to change our situations, but we can change our attitude towards our situations. In between an event/a state of affairs and how we respond, is a space and in this space we have the opportunity to decide how we will cope; our choice and what outcome we desire. Your outcome is a result of that choice.

There will be droughts, there will be downpours, and there will be times when things seem to just flow, life is varied, sometimes simple and yet often, very, very complex. Maybe at this time you feel as if you're in the middle of a "drought", and all you can see is what you are missing. You are not alone, many of us get caught up in expectations and what we feel is our "right" and what we deserve, problem is, does life really owe us anything at all?

The bigger the discrepancy between what we have and what we expect to be having, the bigger the dissatisfaction it seems.

Stripped off possessions, status, adoration and what we "do", ultimately there is only us, the beings.

To quote Viktor Frankl again: “...being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it meaning to fulfil or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualises himself...."

If you are experiencing a "drought" be it emotional or situational, financial or occupational, you still always have you, and within you is the the potential for breaking that drought. Your mind is wider than the sky, you can affect the "weather" by choosing how to respond. May I suggest Hope as a response, because there is a "chewy" quality to hope; it sticks, it stretches and can be used to hold pieces falling apart; together.