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I believed the weather woman so in hopeful expectation I put on a light summer-dress in anticipation of the sun today, but woe is me she let me down and the skies are grey and the sun is still hiding.

As I feel the chill creep up my arms and legs I am wondering if I should give in and change out of my summer-dress or if I should hold on to hope and just put on a cardigan for now. After all there are still several hours stretching ahead of me in which the sun could come out and bright up my day and warm up my limbs.

This mundane pondering thought whether or not the weather will change made me think about hope. All those hopeful exceptions we have about our days and lives, how we can’t help but look for a glimpse of the sun in the rainiest of days or why in the darkest nights we smile up at the stars. We seem to yearn for the light, want things to turn out well, it’s a bit like Leonard Cohen said in one of his poems:

There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

Hope really is a funny thing, unlike all other positive emotions, hope isn’t something we have when life is good, but hope is the very thing we hold on to when things are bad. Hope is the little engine that could and makes us believe in something better in spite of what reality lays out in-front of us. When fear or despair pulls us down, hope is our lifesaver that helps us bob on top of the waves and see the horizon, no matter how far away. Hope opens up our eyes, helps us see possibilities amidst the destruction and shines a light onto a hidden path. It makes us creative, inspires us and gives us that little push we need, gives us energy.

And even when we feel there is no hope somewhere within us a tiny glimmer flickers, always ready for us to fan it into a flame. Even anthropologists believe that hope is vital for survival, without it we would never dare to take a risk, we would always fear the unexpected because our logic tells us to, always calculating the worst possible scenarios. Only hope allows us to see the good and with it the future is possible, that is why humans are programmed to follow it. Like Albert Camus said:

Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it

So with all that said I will cling to the hope of a sunny afternoon and let the goosebumps be for now, a summer-dress as a symbol of my inner undying belief of a  better future, even if it is only a few warm evening hours.