I take Betty when I run many of my errands. I was in search of an organizing thingie, and had struck out at Container Store and Bed Bath and Beyond. My next stop was Muji, which is a store with an odd assortment of good, including clothes and organizing products. (it also has very reasonable prices, so that’s a big plus…)

So Betty and I are in the store, and there’s a mannequin. Betty went up to the mannequin looking for to be played with… (I never claimed my pets are smart) I said:

“Come on. It’s not a real person.”

To which other shoppers started laughing.

(OK- I may have said “It’s not a real person, dumbass”)

I am grateful that I can bring joy to other people with my dog and my antics.

My mindfulness/journal prompt for this week is HOPE

Hope is used in the books I’m reading in the following ways:

  1. The sweeping minor chords, the pining lift into hope, into desperation, into joy, catapulting into that quick, fast, danceable celebration of light and wind across the water- it was all there. Brendan Slocumb
  2. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the impressibility of untried youth and hope. Charles Dickens
  3. If we surrender to the idea that we can’t and needn’t control everything, our expectation is significantly reduced, leading to less disappointment if things don’t work out as we had hoped. Kate Peers
  4. Getting married is an act of hope and optimism- an affirmation of life. Caroline Kennedy
  5. The sheen of spring’s hopeful freshness blanketed all- the bags, the sidewalks, our lives. Qian Julie Wang
  6. When you tackle even a single drawer, you’ll experience success, boost your confidence, and start to feel hopeful, even excited, about tackling the rest of your home. Shira Gill

What I am going to think about as journaling:

  1. When did hope become so narcissistic? Always? It’s rife with narcissism in Dickens
  2. I am a big believer in hope- I think that hope is essential to resilience and yet, when I read how hope is used in books, I can’t help but feel demoralized…
  3. Is hope about trivial things going your way, or is it about the big things?
  4. To feel hopeless is the worst feeling in the world- how do we make people feel less hopeless
  5. This has been a lousy week for both my friends and for the world- is hope enough? When does hope become an action word
  6. One of the quotes that I almost used was something along the lines of, don’t hope you can- believe you can. What’s the difference between hoping something and believing something?
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Source: Complete Poems: 1904-1962 (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1991)

30 thoughts on “Gratitude and Mindfulness: 5/28/22”

  3. Can you have degrees of hope? It’s much easier to have hope that you can achieve something like organizing your home after the success of 1 room, yet how can you feel hopeful at say a national level anymore? I pick and choose where I place my hope these days…

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  4. LOL at Betty and you!

    Oooh Hope! Would be lost without it. Interesting about Dickens and how he uses hope. Hadn’t thought about it that way. But as with anything these days, people can always twist good things to make it what they want. As for me, hope is what keeps me going.

    Believing and hoping are so closely related. I guess for me Believing is something more certain. I can believe that the sun will shine again, for it always does. No matter how dark things may be, the sun does break through. Hard things that I am going through do pass. So when going through a struggle I can believe that it will end and I can Hope that it ends soon! Make sense?

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  5. Lovely quotes about hope. I started to skim them and then found that they required more thought than that. Hope is one of the essentials of the human spirit that keeps us going , putting one foot in front of the other.

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  6. Yes, I love it when dogs mistake statues and mannequins for live beings. Our lab growled and barked at a statue of a bear in a park. My daughter’s pug barks at statues of children. And I love the e.e. cummings poem. He’s my mother’s favorite poet.

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  7. I think hope is universal. Most of us fall back on hope in times of need. And likewise when things are extremely difficult we all may experience moments of hopelessness. That’s normal. When bad things happen, when people we love die, when you or someone you love is diagnosed with a life threatening disease it’s normal to feel temporarily hopeless. The trick is to not wallow in that feeling. To go back to a place of hope and readjust your expectations,
    This week I was told I have to add a new chemo pill to my chemo infusions. For two days I was numb dealing with this disappointing cancer news. But then the sadness passed and my hope renewed. I’ve readjusted and so my hope is that the combo of this new medication will give me more time. So, yeah I believe in hope. Yep, I’m hoping this treatment works and that newer treatments will be available down the road to put me in remission . Hope is a good thing and gives you some control over your life. You either wallow in misery or you hope for better days. And attitude is everything! Peace , love and hope! ❤️✌️

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    2. I have always thought that hope is what we need more than anything…but going through the quotes in the book…it was all I hope I get an A, I hope they have what I want..etc…it was disheartening

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