Things I Found | Hope Edition
Welcome to Things I Found, a celebration of the random, the interesting, the useful, the beautiful, the funny, the sometimes difficult - and everything in between.
Hello you beautiful, kind human,
Welcome back to Things I Found, a newsletter that celebrates the random, the interesting, the useful, the informative, the beautiful, the funny, the sometimes difficult - and everything in between.
Happy New Year! However you celebrated it - by going inwards or outwards, or navigating both - I hope you’re starting your year feeling really good.
This one is less about a thing and more about a feeling. Read on.
The thing I found
Relentless hope, all around.
I found this…
Warming, uplifting, instinctive.
Why?
Saying hope was something to be found is a bit off the usual format, but reading the well-wishes for the year ahead, watching people in the streets and on rooftops, it was the main feeling radiating.
Hope, that small and powerful presence that drives survival, and ambition alike.
It’s not a small feat to find it around us so predominantly, after the years we had.
That’s the beauty of the new year, for me. A newfound beauty.
I’ve never been a big fan of giving so much importance to celebrating the passing of a year or welcoming a new one. Pragmatic, I always found change should be sought as soon as it’s identified. And while I still believe in that urgency, I’ve also come to understand the collective significance of what it means to look at the past, trying to learn from it, and open ourselves to what is yet to come, usually setting intentions. With hope.
Life has a way to mess up with our plans. Accept this, if you haven’t yet. Or better yet, embrace it. Because that’s what hope really is: a timid ask for change. Very rarely we hope for things to remain the same.
Often, however, change doesn’t come the way we expect. The most meaningful, impactful, lasting change comes by surprise. Controlling it is beyond our competency. Whether we spend energy resisting it or learning to go, to grow, with it, is up to us.
Whatever intentions you’re setting for this year, whatever wishes you have for it, whatever desires might be burning you from the inside to propel you forward, whatever old habits you want to get rid of, or new ones you want to incorporate, be open. Listen. Relinquish in these last moments of self-reflection before the year takes full speed. And remember the feeling when change comes to arrest and liberate you.
I used to think of hope as this passive state. We hope, and we move on. A wish to whatever greater energy we believe in, not a plan of how to make it a reality.
Now I see hope is neither, and it’s both. At its core, hope is what keeps us functioning.
How was it found?
By looking around.
Thank you for your time today.
I hope for 2022 to be the best year yet. In whatever shape it takes.
Don’t forget to tell someone you appreciate them today.
Much care,
Nicole Ingra
(someone who wants to inspire more curiosity, kindness & confidence in the world.)
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