Mid-January, I went to Wisconsin to visit my Mom.  The thing on the plane that just was so obvious to me is how loud everyone is.  Why do people have to talk so loud?  I’m on a plane where the engine noise is already loud, but I can still hear individual conversations.  The person you are talking to is right next to you, why do you have to include me in your conversation?  They weren’t even interesting conversations.  It was a whole plane of “look how cool I am”.  Exhausting.  The rest of the world is right, Americans are loud and talk too much.

It was good to see Mom.  Her new place is nice and the people that work there are nice.  She was playing Bingo when I got there.  They have three meals a day and activities.  She has a small kitchen in her apartment so she could still cook if she wanted to.  I’m very glad she was able to move out of her condo into assisted living.

I helped Mom with some shopping.  I took her to Target with me.  I wondered if it would be too much.  It was.  It is a big store and even though we only walked part of it, it was too much.  But she wanted to go to three different stores so I think that would have been worse.  We went out to lunch a couple times and also went to church.  It was great to spend time with her and see her new place.

At church, the preacher was starting a new program with the congregation.  It had steps and things to do.  It sounded like a program that would go on for a month or two and involved extra study or practice outside of Sunday church.  I remember feeling a sense of hope come over the congregation as he talked about the upcoming program and how it was going help make everyone’s year great.  I remember doing workshops, study groups, and programs like this at church when I was in high school.  I remember the sense of hope at the beginning – This is going to change my life – This is the answer to everything – This is going to fix everything – This is going to get me on the right path.  In some of the programs I grew and gained new knowledge.  I can’t say any of them changed my life.  Some sent me on a new path.  I never found the answer to everything.  I can’t say any of them were ever bad, but I noticed something as I sat there in this old familiar feeling (I really like this familiar feeling).  The level of hope at the beginning is so strong and is a feeling far stronger than the outcome ever was.  I realized that it wasn’t just hope, but a feeling of control.  Oh great, this person has all the answers and if I just do all the steps in this program, follow all the learning, I too will have all the answers.  Then I will finally have control of my life, my emotions, my finances, my spirituality, my love live, etc.  In the past, as the programs went on, I learned, but I never became in control of anything.  I never got the carrot I was chasing.  As it turns out, I cannot control life.  This is also a good example of living in the future.  I felt so wonderful at the beginning of one of these programs because of the promise of a better future.  Hope and planning and learning can be tricky.  Hope feels so wonderful and is a huge motivator so we label it as a good thing, but then don’t acknowledge that we are rejecting the present moment and living in the future.  We assume that if we don’t have hope then we must have the opposite, despair, a bad attitude, disbelief or pessimism.  What if life doesn’t have to be an either / or situation.  What if we can be present and plan when the time is right for planning, learn when the learning comes, and know that the future will be great just because it will and not because we are using hope to avoid being present now.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore