Hope

I've been struggling a lot recently. Not struggling like "going under," but more the type of wrestling you do when you're life feels stressful and insecure.

Feeling insecure is nothing new to me. And, to be honest, it's not necessarily driven by circumstance as much as it is by the inner workings of my mind. These days, I'm finding myself to go through a fair number of mood swings. Not bi-polar mood swings. Really, the more basic kind. Some mornings I wake up just feeling a little bit down. During the day, when I'm engaged, I feel pretty good.

Probably, to talk about it, you need a snapshot of where my life is right now: I'm closing in on a year back in NYC, after 19 years living away in Minneapolis. It's also the anniversary of my taking over as General Manger of a web start up.

When I moved here last February, I was flying. I was discovering or rediscovering life in NYC and my new home in Brooklyn. My job was still in the honeymoon phase, and the work was quite manageable. Final paychecks and vacation time and old freelance checks were still coming in from my previous life in Mpls. The first date I went out on was a woman who was smart, beautiful, and fun. I was enthusiastic from our first meeting and so was she. We both had lives, but both wanted a partner and kids. Everything started falling into place.

And then, everything started to crumble. Despite the enthusiasm, the relationship quickly ended. The extra checks started coming in, and while I couldn't claim poverty, the base costs of living in NYC really hit home. Then the true state of the start-up I'd inherited kicked in, and I found I had longer hours and less money (I have an OK salary with very good profit sharing) ahead of me, at least for the foreseeable future.

Then the economy bottomed out. This hit me in a number of ways. First, I have a modest stock portfolio. Despite being modest, it was the safety net that allowed me to sleep soundly while running a start-up. Even in a worst-case scenario, that portfolio was something that could float me between jobs. It quickly lost half it's value. Then there was the job market. If this start-up didn't work, other jobs were now scarce. Finally, there was the reality of the business itself. Building up a start-up in a down economy is far riskier than in good times.

My dating life took a down turn too. Oh, I've been on plenty of dates, but there's been something cynical about it. I've seen some bad behavior on first dates that has blown my mind. And people dating in their late 30s and early 40s often date looking for a spouse. (As much as I hate to admit it, I've had my brushes with that too.) I think NYC breeds dating cynicism as well. There's something horribly sad about going out on a date where both people really just expect it to go nowhere.

So, I woke up this morning, feeling just a little down, and I had to ask myself why. Why was that real lust for life that I felt before. My safety net maybe somewhat gone, but overall, I'm making more money than I was then. (Our owners are truly good guys. When profit sharing turned out to be farther away than any of us thought, they came through with a raise.) I'm not at imminent risk of losing my job -- though everyone is feeling some risk these days. And I've built up a real nice social network in a short time, so my life was, in that way, better. So what's the difference?

This morning, I sat quietly, and just tried to understand the physical stress I was feeling and see what it meant, and it all came down to hope.  I wasn't feeling hope.

Hope is a precious commodity. My first months here were filled  with hopes for a new business and a new life. Then things happened that left me under a cloud. Think about hope as a commodity. That's what this whole election was about. When Obama won, there was a surge of hope. That surge, though, has dwindled over the last two months of the outgoing administration. The economy has continued to worsen. Iraq and Afghantistan have not improved. And war has broken out in Gaza. It's like we made a decision for change in November, but we've been stuck with our old failures since then. (And yes, they are our failiures.)

I woke up this morning feeling financially insecure. I woke up this morning accutely aware that I was 42, single, and missing being in a relationship. I woke up this morning feeling ike things I wanted — a relationship, the success of my business, a little more breathing room in my budget — were all out of reach.

But when I stopped to think why I felt so bad, it wasn't my circumstances, it was my loss of hope. Oh, sure, the circumstances are a big influencer. Success for my business would make a personal shift easier, but really, it's about hope. It's about not adding the stress that comes from worrying about failure to the stress that is already inherant in a start up. It's about going into a first date with a sense of fun, flirtation, and possiblity, instead of dragging the pessimism of that past into the picture. It's about looking around at my life right now as saying, Things are pretty good. Becase even in better times, it can all fall apart tomorrow. That's the reality of life. I'm now in the midst of a bad time globaly, but while tomorow remains uncertain, today, my life is still pretty blessed.

Happiness, I'm coming to believe, is less about what you have and more about the hope you can sincerely hold for the future — even in darker times. And nurturing that hope may be the greatest challenge of our lives, because without it, we simply accept what is no matter how unaccaptable the sittuation.