Faith hope and optimism

Yesterday I posted an entry about hope. I got to thinking afterwards about my earlier (a coupe of weeks ago) post about the three horsemen of the current financial apocalypse – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). Perhaps hope is part of the best triumvirate on the positive side – faith, hope and optimism.

I mentioned faith a couple of times yesterday, but didn’t dwell upon it. I failed to mention optimism at all yesterday. I really think that the current adverse environment has been both a test of out faith or perhaps has served to develop a latent faith in many. There is a point that one gets to after experiencing hopelessness that can only be explained by faith – a faith that grows out of giving up on trying to figure out how to solve your problems and putting them in bigger hands. Once you come to the point where you finally say – not my will but Thy will be done – then hope and optimism can also enter your life and things begin to change for the better.

So, perhaps the acceptance of reality that I wrote about yesterday was really acceptance of something else altogether. There are things that we can change and there are things that we just have to accept and move on. Accepting those things and making the best of the situation is so much easier when one has faith, hope and optimism going for them. The alternative is living a life ruled by fear uncertainty and doubt and leading towards the dark realms of despondency and despair. I do not choose to go there.

So, rather than cowering in fear, fretting about the uncertainty of things and having doubts about the future; you can chose to have faith in a higher power, have hope for a better tomorrow and be optimistic that things will get better. In fact, if you embrace that approach to life you may be surprised that you can be happy with what you have and not spend a lot of time focused upon what you don’t have. You may find that living happily in the moment is much more satisfying than worrying about the future.