Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
Tough times are tough. It’s why they name them so.
The current moment feels like a tougher time. Global war, political division and increasing financial hardship for many. These are not simple things to navigate.
I’ve had a particularly rough period in my life. I’ve had several years of seismic, volatile change. This has included periods where I’ve barely functioned. At one point last year, I struggled to get out of bed. And even then, I was only doing the bare minimum to keep myself alive.
Yet with time to reflect, I realise that the darkest periods were not necessarily the hardest ones. There were extremely tough periods that were physically or emotionally more demanding, yet I had the will to work through them. But the darkest moments ones where I had lost hope for things to get better. When the desire left my eyes, it became extremely difficult to do the most basic of things. At one point I wondered whether the rest of my existence would be this barely-functioning corpse. I started to wonder, what would be the point in continuing to live?
Things have felt different recently. I’ve started to be hopeful that things will improve. I’m seeing some signs of improvement, even if they are slow. Different facets of my life are starting to stabilise. Most importantly, I’m feeling calmer. Even if my energy levels are still quite chaotic, they are still much better than they were about a year ago.
I’ve gone through a particularly tough period according to the astrological chart. Whilst we all go through difficulty, I had several sets of very testing times back to back. The good news though is that this is meant to end in November. From then, this particularly testing period is meant to move towards one with more opportunity and connection.
Is believing in astrology delusion? Perhaps so. But I do not do so without some level of discernment. I don’t follow what it says out of a blind fanaticism, but because it seems to have explained my existence better to me than any person or science has otherwise.
I think the difference between delusion and hope is that delusion is devoid of any practical or realistic reason to believe in something. Hope, on the other hand, has some level of grounding. We can see a possibility for improvement, even if we aren’t sure it might happen.
I’ve come to increasingly appreciate the role of art and fiction. In the past, I would want my entertainment to have a form of education. I would exclusively read non-fiction books. My TV watching habits gravitated to reality, even if I allowed myself the more trashy. For me, fiction was a form of escaping the realities of the world.
But recently, I’ve been seeing the way in which the fantastical can make us dream bigger. It is far more playful and vivid than non-fiction. There is a reason that the Lord of the Rings resonates after so many years compared to a history tome of World War Two. It evokes a sense of spirit and emotion that transcends our daily reality. By transporting us out of our normal world, we are less stuck in seeing things the same-old way.
Right now, there is a distinct lack of hope in the world. I see little of it in the people around me. People falling into the grind, or fearing the worst out of a negative news cycle.
But hope is always there. Bad times are followed by good ones. Things do eventually improve, even if it can take some time.
But ultimately, it is our own choice: do we choose to look for hope?