Displaying items by tag: future

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost. ~Robert H. Schuller

I was looking at a picture of me from about ten years ago. At the time, I was married and life was treating me pretty well. But I recall that time in my life I was unhappy with how I looked. I saw myself as ugly and fat and I was doing everything I could to lose weight. But now when I see that girl from ten years ago, I am stunned by how pretty and thin she was! In the present day, I can see what I couldn’t back then: I was beautiful and thin in that picture!

The poet Andrea Gibson said, Even when the truth isn’t hopeful, the telling of it is.

And so I will.

The truth is, I personally don’t see a lot of hope in this world these days. Not only is the ongoing climate crisis filling me with dread each time the news comes on with words like “unprecedented” to describe any of the abnormal weather conditions in different parts of the world, and then proceeding to give examples of those “unprecedented” climate catastrophes (think hurricanes, the wild fires in California, and the drought in the mid-west), but I also am witnessing first-hand the complete and total dismantling of my country’s basic democratic ideals – the ideals that our country was founded on. It seems as though the basic values I was taught as a child - don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie, don’t hurt others - are justifiable now because of the extremist ideas and wealth the current leadership touts.