This post is a bit different from my usual posts. Yesterday I joined a group of folks who committed to a challenge from Jeff Goins (jeff@goinswriter.com) to write a minimum of 500 words per day for the next 31 days. At this moment, this feels like a significant challenge to my ability and perseverance.
Here’s where hope enters in. I fervently desire to communicate with folks concerning the purpose and promise of hope. To put it another way, I am eager to have conversations with folks using the following statement as the focal point of our dialogue – “every life should have a noble purpose”.
There is little hope in life without self-discipline, purpose, and intentionality/effort. The amount of hope we live into is in direct proportion to how committed we become to discipline, purpose, and effort in our lives. In living into these three conditions, we acknowledge some discomfort will come our way. That discomfort lessens as we become actively involved in living a life that is guided by a noble purpose.
“Nothing’s so Sacred as Honor and Nothing’s So Loyal as Love.” Wyatt Earp (1848-1929)
“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” (Sir Winston Churchill)
“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, only how you are going to live.”
Perhaps we can’t agree on the origin or value of hope, but even the most jaded members of humankind dream. We dream because we wish to possess, capture or covet some outcome – success, happiness, riches, admiration, love, power, just to suggest a few. Dreams release us for a time from the reality in which we find ourselves.
He lived an imperfect life. That led him to find a noble purpose, a purpose for which he would give his life. This kind of personal transformation can be the basis for hope even in the life of an imperfect, rebellious individual. Where we begin our life’s journey and where it ends offers each of us time in which to grow and in which to find a purpose, a noble purpose.
Several years ago I was given a book titled, The 2548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said. When I am stuck for a creative thought or inspiration or both, I grab that book off the shelf and open it up. Last night I did just that. I opened the book to a random page, item number 2069. The quote I stumbled upon was attributed to Josh Billings (1818-1885). He wrote, “There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying.” Good advice and a warning for those of you who read blogs. Let the reader beware!