Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…

From elsewhere:

“Hope is one thing,
gratitude another
and sufficient
unto itself.”
(Mary Oliver)

From my heart:

You have learned a lot about hope, dear one. You have studied it, and written about it, garnered degrees by studying and writing about hope. You know its nuance, its anatomy.
Just as you did the fetal pig that you dissected in high school physiology class.

“I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” they taught you there.

You have learned more about hope from losing it, than you ever did from dissecting it.
A couple of significant losses, at least.

But they weren’t wrong about praise—which is gratitude in another form—and how it can resurrect the will to change—which is hope in another form.

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