"Can you tell me something hopeful?"

Sometimes, all you need is one thing to look forward to.

Earlier this year, my friend Carina sent me a note: “Can you tell me something hopeful?” 

Yes, I told her. We will both be better this year.

How do you know? she asked.

I just know. 

Of course, I could have been wrong! Life doesn’t offer guarantees, except for the one about how it won’t last forever.

But at the moment I responded, I felt hopeful. I believed that both my friend and I will be better, so that’s what I went with.  

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At different times in my life, I’ve felt hopeless. It’s hard to explain exactly how hopeless feels. Is it a weight, a burden? A sense of emptiness that gnaws at the insides? Or is it more the omission of something that is usually present? 

Whatever it is, it’s tough. One thing I’ve learned about these times:

Hope is a sense of optimism and expectation that things will improve—even if you aren’t sure when or how.

So when you’re really struggling, it helps to have something to look forward to. It could be a big thing or a small thing, something coming up very soon, or something a long time from now.

It’s about grasping onto that thing and pausing yourself in this timeline, telling yourself, “I don’t know how anything’s ever going to be better, but at one point, this thing I’m looking forward to is going to happen.”

And sometimes that’s all you need! You just need to get through the feeling of hopelessness so you can get to the hope on the other side. 

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If you’re out there and feeling sad, or at some point in the future you feel sad, or you struggle and feel like, oh man, this is all meaningless and everything sucks… 

Well, first of all, I don’t want to deny that experience for you. It’s real and we can’t just wish it away. So before repeating my suggestion, I acknowledge the feeling. 

But! One thing that can help is to try to find something to hold on to so that you have a small anchor in your day or week. It gives you a reason to keep going, even if just for a little while longer, until you find your footing again.

Hopefulness is not always a choice—sometimes we just feel really bad, and hope seems elusive. But I’ve found that often, hope can be found if we go looking for it. 

And since it can be the one thing that gets you to the other side of hopeless, it’s worth looking for.