WITHOUT HOPE, YOU ONLY LIVE ONE SECOND!

RECENTLY, a close friend sent me a letter (my very first in 10 years since no one writes letter these days due to electronic mails and text messages). But then, he was broken-hearted. After reading the two-page letter, I felt that he must have written it because he wanted to unload the pain he must have been suffering from. When I asked him if I can excerpt some passages of his letter, he told me to go ahead:



"I don't know what I am feeling right now. But because I have not greeted you last February 29, your birthday, you questioned my sincerity. Yes, I called you that day and you were waiting for me to say those two words: Happy Birthday. But then I never greeted you. The fact is, I really didn't know that it was your birthday. Had I known that, I would have greeted you. You said you were not particulars about birthdays but yours happen only once ever five years. Yes, I agree with you on that.



"In the past, I have asked you of your birthday but you didn't want to reveal it. So, at one time, you have told me about February 29 as the day you were born but I never paid attention to it since I thought you were just joking. My brother, who was born on February 28, always joked about being on February 29. So I assumed too, that you were indeed joking. I have forgotten that incident until you brought it again. When I called you a day after your birthday, I can sensed that you felt depressed. And you told me the reason.



"I have tried to call you several times. I have send text messages I can't count anymore. I also wrote several e-mail letters. But you completely ignored me. Since then, I have blamed myself for not greeting you on your birthday. Then, I received a text message from you that it was over between the two of us.



"In your long message to me, you told me that your heart is already numbed. You don't feel anything. Your heart is fragile, you said, and you don't want to be hurt again. The last time was when you broke up with your former love. Now, you are experiencing it again. I am very much sorry if I have done that. It was never my intention to hurt you. You are the love of my life. I have never loved anyone as I have loved you. You mean so much to me."



Now, can you feel also what he is going through? Well, the final words struck me the most: "But I am hoping that one of these days you will realize that we were both wrong in our assumption. I hope that one day you will be back in my arms again ready for a new chapter of our love."



Hope. That's the word that caught my attention. As one unknown author said, "Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope."



C. Neil Strait has the same opinion: "Take from a man his wealth, and you hinder him; take from him his purpose, and you slow him down. But take from man his hope, and you stop him. He can go on without wealth, and even without purpose, for a while. But he will not go on without hope."



Pelagius said, "There is no worse death than the end of hope." An Arabic proverb reiterates, "One who has health has hope, and one who has hope has everything." And Erich Fromm advised, "To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime."



François Duc de La Rochefoucauld admitted, "Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route." To which an unknown write penned: "When the world says, 'Give up,' hope whispers, 'Try it one more time.'"



I was reminded by the words of William Shakespeare. In 'Measure for Measure,' he wrote: "The miserable have no other medicine but only hope." Film actor Christopher Reeve, when he was still alive, declared, "Once you choose hope, anything's possible."



In one corner of the world, a sullen, sulking, chilly friendless darkness squatted. Suddenly, there appeared in forsaken corner a tiny light. It was small, but it was a light. Someone had put it there. It just stood there and radiated.



A passerby remarked, "Don't you think you would be more useful somewhere else and not in this Godforsaken corner?"



"Why?" asked the little light. "I shine because I am light. And because I shine, I am a light. I don't shine in order to be seen. No, I shine because it gives me joy to shine, and to be a light."



But when the gloomy darkness heard this, it gritted its teeth and with full of fury tried to put the light out. But the gigantic darkness was powerless against the tiny light. "Hope is a light we keep inside that no one can touch.," Jermaine J. Evans once said. Anne Lamott also remarked, "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come."



Helen Keller pointed out, "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." That is what Mikhail Bulgakov also use to explain hope in 'The White Guard.' He wrote: "Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"



Are you broken hearted? Did you fail from the examination you were taking? Though it seems the world is turning against you? Do you feel no one cared for you? Don't fret. American president John F. Kennedy advised, "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."



And Aragorn, in 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,' told us: "There is always hope."