Anytime you have something you can look forward to, you have hope. And when you have hope, stress goes down. So, in order to cope with difficulties in life, what you need to do is create hopeful situations and hopeful environments. Once you've done this, you can continue in that hope because you now have something positive to focus on and look forward to. So as long as you can achieve some of those things and experiences you've conceived, you feel good in the moment, despite current difficulties and stress; therefore, you are not always weighed down by the negative.When I heard the above words, I immediately realized the conspiracy of the Universe bringing more understanding as to why we cling to certain things so desperately. We cling because of what we think those things mean.
We cling because in those things lies our hope. This is why we cling to relationships. Our greatest hope is in the relationship. Our hope in the relationship is what is helping us deal with our current difficulties and stress. This is why we cling to money. Our greatest hope is in the money. Our hope in the money is what is helping us deal with our current difficulties and stress. This is why we cling to countries. Our greatest hope is in the country. Our hope in the country is what is helping us deal with our current difficulties and stress. This is why we cling to religion. Our greatest hope is in the religion. Our hope in the religion is what is helping us deal with our current difficulties and stress. This is why we cling to race. Our greatest hope is in the race. Our hope in the race is what is helping us deal with our current difficulties and stress. And this example applies to many other things we cling to, starting with our optimal and suboptimal identifiers of self. When we cling to these things for these reasons, we will not let go until we gain better understandings by reprogramming our definitions and meanings of:
1) things
2) stress and difficulties
3) what is the best hopeful way to deal with those things In other words, we cling to suboptimal things when we have suboptimal understanding and we cling to optimal things when we have optimal understandings. During recent Ages, we have been socialized (reprogrammed) to seek escapism as the main way of dealing with the tremendous amount of imbalances, hardships and stresses we encounter. Since most of the things we cling to in society are examples of escapism, most of the things we cling to are maladjustments, thus we are maladapted. Just to be clear, one of the reasons we cling so desperately to things and place the most hope in them is because we do not have a healthy understanding of it. What seems to hold true: the deeper the difficulty and stress and traumatic event and the longer it exists unresolved:
1. the easier it is for us to overlook shortcomings, inconsistencies and contradictions in the things we cling to
2. the more likely we are to cling to and place hope in something which cannot alleviate the difficulty, stress or trauma.
3. the more likely we are to choose the ”to each his own” escape route.
