In response to: What does the word hope mean to you? You can quote the dictionary if you must or thesaurus, but I am really looking for what it is for you personally. It has become a very important word to me over the years and I am colored by my past Christian world views but would like your take on it.
Hope is one of those concepts almost like love to me or joy or those wonderful characteristics or at times part of some people's actual being that is so important and precious it is hard to define. It is there deep within but words don't seem adequate to embody it and bring out all the various aspects. Like love it transcends just one aspect of our lives but can carry over into anything.
If we are ill as I have been struggling with my asthma lately it's hope that the spring thaw and warmer weather will be here and I will feel energetic again.
At the same time for the larger picture in my life hope is that one day some poem or blog or something I write will reach out to many people and show them the need to really start connecting with each other. Bit egotistical there but that is my heart.
Hope illuminates the path ahead when there is darkness around and even naysayers who would stop us. Hope keeps people fighting when they have serious illnesses. Hope is strength and passion and not passive but a living vibrant thing. It is almost an entity in itself at least in my opinion.
There is hope that the war will end and that many of our boys will be home soon and that someday we will figure out a way to be at peace with each other. Hope is something that many of the great leaders down through time inspired in others. Such as Martin Luther King.