The case for Hope

Started a Podcast for an assignment! Hope you all enjoy it!

 Hello there everyone, my name is Colin Cavanaugh and this is the morning coffee. Today we're gonna be talking about a very serious topic. Hope. Now my listeners, whom I love deeply, have always said things about me like “Colin is such an optimist”, “Colin remains unbothered by everything”, but never “Colin is the kind of person to struggle with depression”, or “Colin is the type of guy to attempt”. Now I wasn’t always like how I am right now. I used to struggle hard with my thoughts and my outlook on life. I assumed that nobody wanted me here which stemmed from my rough relationship with my father causing me to lose trust in even the person I looked up to the most. That was who I was for the longest time, a broken child with imposter syndrome. Now, however, I take each day in stride and genuinely enjoy the life I have been given. So What changed? Well in one word, “Hope” did. Hope saved me from ending my life, hope caused me to push on and continue living. However, hope is such a broad term, it is hard to nail down and actually define. Literally, hope is defined as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen” and “a feeling of trust”. To me, however, hope was the tiny things in my life. Going out with my friends one more time, the next episode of a show I’m watching, seeing my brothers and sisters grow up, going to the places I’ve always wanted to go to. Hope is scarce, yet abundant. It is different for everyone yet consistently saves people at the edge. 

In a Ted Talk by Gill Hayes she talks about her attempt on her life that failed. What saved her body may have been the hospital, but what saved her soul? Hope. A child knitted her a small bookmark with a word that reinvigorated her soul and desire to live. That word was hope. She goes on to say that “Depression is an intense illness”. It warps your thinking and a person is unable to act normally. Hope is the cure to this. 

Suicide is not the only thing hope can help with though. When life feels like it’s beating you down, hope is able to flourish. Our next section is an excerpt from a TED Talk from former monk Somnieng Houern and the way out he found from his hellish life with an abusive stepdad, poor family, and poor healthcare in a third world country:

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To Venerable Somnieng, hope is kindness. And is something that everyone should have within themselves and give to others. He tells a story of a woman helping him and saving his life when he had Malaria and how he had given up on his life at that point. He changed his life around after experiencing that kindness and he has helped spread hope throughout the world.

To the skeptics this section is for you. A professor of social work at the University of Oklahoma and Director of the Hope Research Center, Chan Hellman, has written more than 150 scientific publications about what hope is. While giving a speech in Oklahoma City he tells everyone that “hope is the belief that your future will be better than today and you have the power to make it so”. Hope deals with “goals, pathways, and willpower”. His countless research has revealed to him that behind success is hope and hope is made up of willpower and pathways to reach a goal. One may have the roads open to attain their goals, but if they don’t have the willpower to keep on going despite the hardships they will inevitably face, they’ll break down and give up. The hope of attaining the goal is willpower.

Throughout this episode of the podcast I hope you’ve all learnt what hope is in general and will try to find what hope means for you personally. Every person on this Earth is different and is going to do different things in life. You only have one you so you must make the best for yourself. Run, walk, or crawl through life but never stop moving and always hold onto your hope and keep your reason for moving close. Like I said at the start, hope is different for everyone. For some it’s research, for some it’s kindness, and for some it’s just tiny things to get us through, however, one fact that remains true for all is that hope allows us to persevere and causes us to be able to do things we would’ve thought impossible. Before we go as well, I want to leave you all with a quote by Samuel Smiles, famous Scottish author and government reformer throughout the 1800s:

“Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles.”

This has been Colin with the morning coffee and I hope you all have a great rest of your day, goodbye.