Hope and Love

Spring time has always been one of my favorite seasons. It is also one of my favorite examples of hope.

After a long cold winter when things seem gray and unfriendly, the first buds appear on the trees and the first flowers start to push their way through the earth.

It is a season of rebirth and I think that no matter how old we are, we can all have our own seasons of rebirth. I’ve had a number of them myself and I’m waiting for the next one right now.

I wonder if even the most positive people in the world still go through their seasons of doubt when hope seems far away.  I have been going through my own doubts lately where there seemed to be very little hope left. Then something inside of me said, “Wait a minute. There is always hope. Sometimes that is all we have.” The seeds are planted. The flowers are pushing their way through my heart and a new hope is beginning to bloom in my life right now.

Hope for love is one thing we all share. Mother Teresa said, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

The hunger for love will drive us mad and sink us into the deepest, darkest despair. It can also push us to make bad choices in our lives. I’ve made a number of my own and I thank God that at least I’ve learned something through those choices.

My last relationship ended 11 years ago and when that happened, I decided that if I am attracted to a man in any way, there must be something wrong with him. In the very least he is a cheat and a liar. That has been my experience with most of the men that I’ve had in my life.

After that learning experience, I decided that I need to look for good examples of good men in good relationships. I chose one of my uncles. I watched him and how he treated my aunt and I decided that I would like to find a man like my uncle.

A few weeks later, he was gone. He was having problems with his memory and he decided that rather than burden his family, he would take his own life.

I was devastated. I was heartbroken for my aunt and I was heartbroken for myself because once again it seemed that I had made a bad choice about who to look up to.

There is one good thing that came out of that painful experience. I wrote one of the best poems I think I’ve ever written. It was published in an anthology and it was also published on a CD of recited verses.

In the past two years I’ve been watching a lot of Bollywood movies. I am a huge fan of Shahrukh Khan and one of his movies is definitely my favorite, “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.” The love that the character Surinder Sani has for his wife is amazing. At the end of the movie he says that the reason he loves her so much is because he sees God in her.

Some will say that it is just a fantasy. It is just a story in the movies and real life isn’t like that. I wonder why not. Why can’t we all have a match made in heaven where a person will love us and want to make us happy even when we can’t see how wonderful they really are?

One of my brothers who has always loved to give me advice even when I don’t care to hear it once told me maybe I should lower my standards a bit and then I could find a relationship and get married.

I don’t think I need to do that. I think I will hang on to my dreams. I think I will hang on to the idea that if there is a Surinder Sani out there for me, God will lead me to him. If it doesn’t happen in this lifetime, I’m willing to wait a 1,000 lifetimes to feel and experience that kind of love.

© Pamela Sawyer, 2012