“I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong, he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure, he’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life, larger than life”
-Holding out for a Hero, Ella Mae Bowen
So, this is a song that is a remake, which you all probably know that by the title. The thing I love about this version is that I feel it captures the true emotion behind the words. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about hope and what it means to have it. I think hope is so important, but many of us lose it because we become jaded by our experiences.
Every year, probably since I turned 18, my birthdays have been pretty awful. I’ve been dumped, I’ve had people I care about forget, I’ve been really sick. You name it; the dumbest, little things have messed up my birthdays. The thing is, I still love birthdays. Every year I find myself counting down the days, saying “this year is going to be the best birthday yet, its actually gonna be fun this year.”
Hope
[Noun]
The feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best:
That may be a good example of having hope, but the thing is so many of us lose hope. We let our past experiences determine how we view future endeavors. We shouldn’t do that. In letting our past define our future, our mistakes, our hurts, and our failures tend to take the forefront of our minds. We spend too much of our time and energy focusing on the negative that we almost can’t even comprehend that good things will happen. We put ourselves in a mindset of skepticism.
I have a very dear friend who was talking to me about the hurt they experienced in relationships, to which it sounded like they had almost completely given up hope that love is real. That broke my heart to almost the point of tears. The only thing that kept running through my mind was the fact that no matter how many times we’ve been hurt, it doesn’t mean that the people who hurt us were right. I’ll be the first to admit that I forget that on the regular, but if I can say it out loud, then at least its somewhere in the vaults of my mind.
Think for a moment, if hope wasn’t even a thing? We’d all be walking around like Eyore from Whinnie the Pooh. Instead of searching for rainbows and pots of gold we’d have these little rain clouds following us around. Dude, that would suck! Let me just say, nobody wants to hang out with someone who’s always moping around. The thing is were all going to have bad days, but those bad days shouldn’t define you and they definitely shouldn’t be the only things you focus on.
Hope is easily lost, but getting it back happens in an instance. When you get it back is like when you’re at the mall and you walk into Urban Outfitters and that thing you’ve been eyeing for 3 months is actually on the sale rack and you get an extra 20% off. Let me tell you, that’s a HECK YEAH moment!
Something crucial about that example is what’s implied by reading between the lines. The whole time you go to Urban and look around, there’s a piece of you holding out hope; you wouldn’t keep going back to something if you didn’t slightly believe the outcome would change. That’s what’s really neat about the concept of hope; even when it seems to be lost, there’s a slight glimmer in the future. Hope makes truly giving up almost impossible.
Romans 5:2-5 (ESV)
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
I really love that hope sort of forces you to look for the best in everything; it forces you to be positive, hope also requires patients, which is another reason we want to give up on it and it’s hard to hang onto.
Romans 8:25 (ESV)
“But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
I will be redundant and say it again, I love that; hope forces you to search after God and be positive.
I leave you all with this, hold out hope. Never give up. You are amazing and there is always a sunset at the end of the day. Look for the beauty and you will find it.
XoXo,
Brunette Adventurer