Needing Something to Look Forward To?

 I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.

Charlotte Bronte

Do you need something to look forward to? 

Is having something to look forward to essential for making your life a happy one?  One that is worth living? Are you one of the many who ascribe to the idea that "hope is everything"?

The Beauty of Hope

I do love the feeling of hope.  I love the way it picks me up and gives my life a little meaning. I like the way it puts a spring in my step and gives me a gentle nudge forward. Hope and having something to look forward to has provided much needed light in some of the darkest spaces of my life.  It kept me going.

 I also  absolutely hate the way I feel when there seems to be an absence of hope...when  something I was hoping for or looking forward to doesn't materialize. I hate how dark it all gets when there doesn't seem to be anything "positive" or powerful enough to focus on up there in the distance, something I can move toward that will take my mind at least, if not my physical entity,  out of these holes Life seems to so unceremoniously dump me in from time to time.

I, for the longest time, was  convinced that hope was essential in creating happiness and meaning in this human experience.

Hope: A Conditioned Response

I know I am not alone in thinking this way, am I?  Philosphers, poets, as well as spiritual and political  leaders have for centuries used hope and our dependence on it to move humanity forward, haven't they? Aren't we taught that it is all about going forward.  What has been conditioned in us, is this message, "Now sucks! Don't think about it. Deny it! Repress and suppress it!  It is not important. Escape it by turning your mind to something up in the distance.  The future is all important, all that matters really.  This moment doesn't matter unless it can take you up there. Just use this awful or insignificant  now as a stepping stone only ...step on it, crawl over it, pretend it doesn't exist...as you make your way to that distant light up ahead. Always have a light up ahead to move toward. Focus on that. " 

Hmmm! This mentality works I suppose in keeping people moving forward toward their goals.  It keeps up productivity and movement, activity and alike. 

But.... 

Hope: A Destroyer of the Acceptance of  Now? 

What does hope and a reliance on looking forward to something do to our understanding of the "now"?   If my happiness is dependent on having something to look forward to up there in the future ( a time, I will remind you that never comes) am I truely happy, and at peace?  Am I truly living if I am experiencing life only in my mind? How do we then respond to the moment we are in, the timeless, furureless presence? Are we using hope as a drug to numb from , so we do not have to truly "experience" and "feel" Life right here and now? 

When we get to a certain understanding that life is now...not up there in the "idea" of a  future, that the future is just a mental concept created by an ego that is never satisfied....will hope still have the same effect on our life expereience? Will we still need "something to look forward to" or will we find a certain peace in having "nothing to look forward to"?

Hmm!  I ponder this as I realize my future, according to ego, looks pretty blah! At first, I was like OMG...I have nothing to look forward to...there must be something terribly wrong with me."

Peace in Not Having Something to Look Forward To.

Then I gently reminded myself : My life isn't up there in some proverbial future.  It is here and now.  I don't have to numb from this moment, no matter how challenging it may be, by filling my mind with an injection of hope...I just have to be  here and now, breathe here and now, experience what my body is feeling here and now, notice, allow and learn from the emotions that are here and now as I express them, release them without judging them. I don't need something to look forward to.  I need to live in the only time I can truly live...here and now.

Wow!

That was a bit of a revelation. 

Maybe we should do as Charlotte Bronte did...look into the moment, the presence, the essence of now which she referred to as looking upward to the source of faith...  rather than spend all our time looking forward to something.

All is well.