By JoEllen Collins
Two young girls are resting in the poppy fields near their homes, gazing at the cloud formations dancing in a clear sky over California’s San Fernando Valley. They are sharing their dreams: does that puffy cloud really look like the knight on a white horse, ready to swoop me up and carry me off to a life of elegance and glamour? What other fantasies are embodied in the shapes we visualize? Oh, we say, “I hope our dreams come true.” Later, we cross our fingers and then share our palms with each other in the hope that life will shine like the sun above.
Do we as adults still “hope” for things that we may, deep down, know are most likely unattainable? “I hope I win the lottery,” “I hope my new man is someone good for me.” These hopes depend on accidents of fate or on other people for fulfillment.
On New Year’s Day, I attended a workshop with a few people to consider the prospects for the fulfillment of our dreams, no matter our age or how experienced we are. It seemed a lovely way to greet 2020. One particular discussion involved the words we might choose when thinking about facilitating the positive results of our efforts.
I had always defined the words “hope” and “faith” as synonymous in their relation to human desire. However, I now see them as two different approaches to intent and result.
I love Emily Dickinson’s image, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the soul.” I have certainly always hoped for a positive outcome of work, hoped that I was doing the right thing, hoped that my relationships would be meaningful and lasting. Hope is certainly also a mechanism by which we survive disappointment and pain, thinking another day may bring happiness.
What I just perceived in a fresh way, though, is that faith is a rather different idea. I’m not talking here about religious faith, which is a belief that we are spiritual beings capable of a relationship with God or a power stronger than ourselves, certainly a personal, deeply studied concept.
Instead, I looked anew at faith as a necessary step toward fulfilling dreams, as it connotes positive energy. If we have faith in our visions, we have already taken a step to realizing them. We believe that the outcome will be as we intended. Faith is a way of saying YES, even before we realize the dream. It means that we are already aiming toward a goal, knowing that our inner self accepts its attainable possibilities. We are not just crossing our fingers, nor awaiting a magic wand or genie in a bottle.
Although the childhood Disney refrain of “When you wish upon a star” still occasionally skips across my adult mind as a tempting delight, instead I plan to choose feasible though challenging goals and then take actions toward realizing them, one step at a time, with a strong faith they will materialize.