HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL – Podcast & Blog By Dee Chadwick

this week’s blog/podcast is up and posted at www.deechadwick.co.uk/blog

Podcast 10 minutes 47 seconds

This past week, I feel, has been filled with a lot of hope – hope that we can get back to work, hope that we can see friends, hope that it won’t be too long before we can have a hug. For some, simply hope that you-know-what will take a hike! My hope – in addition to the above is that you will make my day and click through to read or listen to this piece. Keep on keeping safe. Keep on caring for and about others. Dee.

This phrase is a good old stand-by for me. If and when facts seem to let me down; situations seemingly line up to conspire against me; people turn out not to be as I thought they were – I can always fall back on hope. A hoping that I won’t have run out of hope, as it is, according to the phrase always available to leap to my defence.

PRESENT HOPES
I have to hold my hand up here and say that this ‘ere virus could be my fault, whilst keeping my tongue very firmly in my cheek that is. What makes me feel this way? Well, it all comes down to a book that I read over the Christmas and New Year period. I don’t make New Year Resolutions, but I knew that I didn’t want next Christmas and New Year to be as the current and previous ones with me being ill or unable to get out and about through injury. The book was aptly called ‘Next Year Will Be Different’. That was it. I there and then decided that this was going to be the case for me. Employing a far from SMART target, I vowed that next year WAS going to be different for me. Not just the festive period, but the whole kit and caboodle of 2020.The year started pretty much as previous ones had, so I sort of upped the ante and put it out to the universe in a way designed to enable the Theory of Attraction to click – that this year REALLY was going to be different. Then COVID -19 made its presence known by spreading from its apparent roots in China to spread round this old world of ours. Boy, did my life and the lives of millions of others change. Maybe, just maybe I should in future refrain from grand gestures and make all of my targets very SMART, Dee specific ones!My hope at present – and I presume the hope of many others is that COVID-19 will do as a certain president said it would – boom – and away it goes! This is a rare happening for me, that I am hoping that something DT has uttered will come true – against the odds. Well, maybe not quite as he said as I like to think that I am realistic and with a reasonable grasp of basic science and scientific facts.

On a personal level, I hope that the dentist will soon be able to fix my tooth. The one that chose the beginning of the pandemic to begin to disintegrate. I also hope that the weight I have put on will disappear as easily as it has gone on. I have eaten well during lockdown. I have largely eaten healthily and drunk very little alcohol. Yes – I hold my hand up to my one bit of comfort eating – chocolate, but not too much or too often. I have done lots of gardening, but haven’t walked as much as I was doing beforehand. I have my reasons, but I feel that my reasons have morphed into excuses. Excuses that will have to be firmly kicked into touch pretty soon.  I also hope that I continue to be able to prevent the slide down the slippery slope of depression taking over. So far I have been able to use my coping strategies to prevent this as I hold the stop sign up to me feeling sorry for myself and pile on the gratitude for the very many good and positive things available to me, even in my isolation. I don’t merely hope I can do this – rather, I know that I can do this. It will take more than that invisible virus to grind me back down again! I hope that I finish the things that I had put on my list of things to be finished. In all honesty, I have no idea where the time has gone to. I haven’t stopped ‘doing’, with only rare forays into jigsaws against the backdrop of box set binge watching.

My time has been punctuated with many Dee to Dee heart to hearts to reassure, calm, build up, congratulate myself according to need. I omitted any mental beating up that I could have persuaded myself were necessary because of things done or not done; thoughts and feelings about to be dwelled upon.

My most important hope is that my friends, my clients, my readers stay safe and well and that they emerge into our next new way of being with positivity and a readiness to embrace the changes that will be necessary to see them flourish both personally and professionally.

HUMAN NATURE

It is, supposedly, an inherent aspect of human nature always to find fresh cause for optimism. I guess that there are exceptions to this way of being, especially if mental illness problems such as depression and anxiety are involved. For such people, finding even a chink of optimism to cling on to can be a difficult task. To then go on to fan that tiny ember of candle light way down a tunnel takes every ounce of strength and courage. Especially when some so and so seems to take pleasure in extinguishing that candle and the hope it represented. Sadly, the ‘blower out’ is so very often the thoughts, the beliefs, the feelings of the person themself.  Hope is the very thing that allows you to see that candle flame in the darkness, no matter how small, no matter how all encompassing that darkness may feel.

So, here’s to human nature and its optimism and hope. May it support us as we support each other. For those who may struggle with this aspect of their being – here’s to friends, family, professionals, pets who help and support until they are able to reach a point of self-sufficiency once more.

TO ROUND UP

I quote Martin Luther King Jr, with a thought that rings true for us all in this time of cancelled occasions, holidays, ways of being ..‘We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.’

I cannot end without a quote from the wonderful book ’The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse’ by Charlie Mackesy. My go to book throughout the past weeks. Seemingly, I am far from alone in this….

The quote is an exchange between the boy and the horse –

‘What do we do when our hearts hurt?’ asked the boy.

‘We wrap them with friendship, shared tears and time, till they wake hopeful and happy again.’

‘Do you have any other advice?’ asked the boy.

‘Don’t measure how valuable you are by the way you are treated’ said the horse.

‘Always remember you matter, you’re important and you are loved, and you bring things to this world that no-one else can.’

Words that are so worth remembering. Take care. Keep safe, well and hopeful.

To listed to all of Dee’s blogs, head over to her website http://www.deechadwick.co.uk/blog

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