Hope Moves You Along

I have been thinking a lot about lesson’s learned.  Why things are the way they are, and how things are constantly evolving.  I have learned that the only thing constant is change. The only thing permanent in this life is change. How you continue to handle the change and evolve and continue to move forward is up to you. These are the lessons I've learned:

                Eventually you learn that your future may not always look like everyone thinks it should. You learn that opportunities present themselves, everyday. You learn that even though you have things to be afraid of in your life, you don’t have to let those fears confine you or restrict how you live your life. You learn that no amount of guns, ammunition, dead bolts, and steel bars can keep you safe, and you learn how to hide in plain sight. You learn that you don’t need someone to tell you what to think, because it’s how you think on your own that matters.  You learn that no amount of roses makes up for true gratitude and no amount of sorry’s really means true forgiveness if the apologizing party still continues to break your heart. 

             You learn that anger is a secondary emotion to whatever you are really feeling and that when someone makes you feel agitated, frustrated and isolated, there is always a reason. You learn where your past ends, and your future begins. You learn to take the necessary steps to rebuild your life. You learn to get up from the floor where you’ve been crying in a puddle of your own tears and make a new life. You learn that your future may not look like you thought it did and race does not confine you. 

          You learn that what other’s think of your life and how you choose to live it does not matter. You learn to make a new path on your own terms, your own merits, playing by your own rules. You learn to take the parts of life that are good from the situations that are bad, and move forward. You learn to talk to the people that care, the people that matter, the people that listen. You learn to advance. You learn progress, you learn to listen, you learn to recognize. You learn to relate to the parts of other’s stories you can relate to and rewrite your own. 

         You learn to pick up a hammer, a nail, and some new paint and you begin to rewrite the chapters of your life. You begin to recognize what takes work, and what will be easier. You learn to recognize that life is all about proverbial hammers and nails, and fictitious buckets of paint. You learn to manage. You learn to compartmentalize. You learn to cry in the shower on bad days so your children don’t hear you, and you learn to celebrate with them and get ice cream on the good days because they don’t come around all too often.   

         You learn that sometimes even though everything looks fine on the surface, it’s not fine, and men will continue to hurt your heart. You learn that even though you would like to go through life with a knee-jerk reaction to the groin of every man that’s ever hurt you, you learn that walking away takes strength, and staying and fighting is sometimes the harder option. You learn that diamonds are not a guarantee and even though someone offers you one, and tries to help you rebuild your life, it’s not the same vision.  You and your partner are standing in front of a blank canvas and you need to be on the same page to paint the best possible portrait of your life together. 

          You learn that beauty comes from pain just like the artist Van Gogh created beauty in his “manic phase,” and that even though we are not cutting the ears off of our problems and mailing them to our lost loves, you begin to understand why he may have done that. Did she not listen to you? Did she not hear what you had to say? Were you not being heard, were you painting to escape your fear? How do you take the shit that’s been dealt to you in life and begin to use it to fertilize your garden and share the blooming flowers with others. You learn that even when someone tells you in an accusatory tone to “take it easy,” or “give it up,” you never will. You learn you have a warriors spirit and the fire inside of you will not be extinguished. You learn how to use what you have to get where you’re going. You learn to overdraw your checking account when you need to, and make a plan for repaying it. You learn that every purchase matters, and even though you may not have the money to live within your needs, you’ll still find a way. 

             You learn to make it look so easy from the outside. You learn to use what you have for what you need, to get ahead, to move forward, to plan accordingly. You learn that there are few men capable of holding the hand of a woman so strong that she does not need a man, but she want’s one.  You learn that not every man has your best interests at heart, even though he says he loves you, and is promising the world.  You learn that even though you want to move forward and see a way through the maze, you have to have the strength to ask for the help you need, but that doesn’t mean that you have to take the help that is given. 

It doesn’t mean that the help will not come, it means that it may not be the best solution for your life at the time. 

             You learn that even Holocaust survivors share a part of your story, because they could be beaten and bloodied, brain-washed, starved, and left for dead, but that in all that pain, and all that sorrow, you stand up, and “brush the dirt off your shoulders” like Jay-Z told ya, and move the hell on with your life. You learn that fear is not getting you anywhere, and pain does not produce consequences if you aren’t listening to the right voice. You learn to rebuild and move forward. You wipe the slate clean however many times you need to and mess up, fail, fall forward and write with permanent marker as often as you need to also. You learn to give yourself permission to fail. You learn to try to paint accurate pictures of your life for people with as much detail as needed so that they can make the right decision for you. 

              You learn that even someone having a bad day somewhere can royally fuck with your life. You learn when to shut out the voices that don’t matter, and listen to the ones that do. You learn to never be silent, to never be afraid, to never back down, to be in the face of all your problems. You learn to try to pick up the pieces of your life in the ways that matter to you. You learn to listen to hope, shut out fear and distraction and stop falling down. You learn that even when you do fall down, scrape your knees, bruise your shoulder, cut your lip; you learn to wipe away the blood, squeeze your eyes to the tears and keep moving forward. Cause there is good stuff at the end, there is good stuff along the way. There is sunshine to be scattered, and hope to be found, and light to be shed in the lives of others. You learn to listen to your sixth sense because it guides you. You learn to listen to your intuition because it is sacred. You learn to hold out for the things that are worth waiting for even though rushing into them seems like the perfect solution. 

           You learn that the wedding of your dreams is possible, but that the groom may be negotiable. You learn that prices are negotiable, and the way you pay for things along the way is being nice, and the currency that is always there is hope and gratitude and peace. If you find a way to help others get to their peace of mind, their solace, their  “sunshine,” they will always find a way to repay you with kindness. You learn to do the right thing, to never walk on anyone, to have hope along the way. You learn that even though you are down to your last $10 and you need that $10 to put gas in your car to drive to the store to buy ramen noodles for 17 cents a package, you still have a way to earn more. 

         You have a way to answer the cries for help, you have some solutions to offer along the way. You learn that even though others may think you are having a nervous break down,  because you are yelling and screaming for what you know is right, you know yourself enough to know that because it is what is right, you get angry, you scream, you yell, and you move the hell on with your life. You learn that the solutions that are fixing every one else’s problems may not be the solution to fixing your own. You learn how to stay up all night when you need to—to get things done, and sleep for 12 hours at a time on the days you need to sleep, because even though that doesn’t make sense to any one else, it makes sense to you. You learn that even though you forgot to write your 5 page Essay for your Advanced English course in high school because some domestic violence happened at home, that kept you from writing your paper; you have an English teacher who believes in you, and knows you’re a good writer; a decent person, and she wants to help you develop your voice too.  

            You learn that even though you did not share that part of your life with her, she can see the fear in your eyes, the worry, the intent. So she gives you another day to complete the assignment and another day is all you needed, because you got an ‘A’ on the paper. You learn to recognize the people that knock you down, and the ones that help you stand back up. You learn that even though you had to take regular English, your junior year of high school because you did not understand how a syllabus worked, because no one ever taught you and you failed one semester, does not mean that teacher understands where you are in your life. You learn to move to a regular English class and accept the ‘B’ because you knew you could do better but the violence at home would not stop. You learned to switch to an advanced English class your senior year, and excel in that class and move forward with hope, perseverance and faith.  You learn that the Summer before college spent worrying about college is no Summer at all, and who wants an ulcer anyway?!

            You learn to talk to people in your situation that share your story and how to move forward with the skills that you have. You learn to be brave, to be skinny when you have to, to be fat when you have to, to accept yourself for your faults because other’s will too. You learn to feel good about life. You learn to only reason with reason itself and to not back down or go quietly into the night. You learn that age has no bearing on maturity and love truly knows no boundaries. You learn to listen to your heart, regardless of what the cynics say, and to violate the law when the law is wrong, and stay strong when others are telling you, you might go to jail. You learn to hope. You learn to find hope in your own situation and help others find hope in theirs too. You learn how a new coat of paint and a new pair of shoes are enough to help someone else rebuild their life. You learn what you can from what you know, you learn how to be a philosopher and an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist when you have your heart in the right place. Reason will tell you differently, fear will try to bind you, hope will find it’s way.  Hope is the flower that grows up through the sidewalk cracks even though reason tells it not to, hope is the rhythm that moves all of us along. Heaven can be a heart beat away, pain can be pushed aside, and the characters of our lives can be rewritten. Good friends will find you, safety will find you, and hope will move you along.