Hopefulness

As the sun goes down today, I notice that the days have become visibly longer now that we are a month since the winter solstice.  Each year at about this time, I make the same observation, which is inevitably followed by a sense of hopefulness as more light comes into each day.  In a few more weeks, I will be able to leave my workplace in the daylight instead of the darkness.  A few more weeks after that I will be able to walk in the daylight after I get home. Hope...the hope that will get me through the long days of winter.

I now stand on the precipice of diving into writing a new book.  To do so implies hope: why else would I start?  If I put in the time, creativity, perseverance, determination, focus, and patience, I have hope that a book, which will touch the hearts of thousands, will be born.  While the hope for longer days requires nothing of me except the passage of time,  I know the hope that births books is at least as much sweat and work as it is trusting something good will result.

Leading from the Heart demanded over four year of writing, rewriting, taking feedback from friends who read it,  rewriting, writing, editing, tearing it apart and putting it together differently...and that was before the real work began.  Months, then years, of attempting to find an agent and/or a publisher were followed by more rewriting and editing. Then, one day a miracle happened: the book lay in my hands with my name on the cover.

I walked into a Barnes and Noble near my home in North Carolina, and by the front door stood 100 books, quickly flying out the door.  The store called and reported that they'd sold out of the book before a book signing the next day. A Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection.  Letters followed from people who had been touched by the book.  Executives wanted me to coach them so they could lead from the heart. Keynote addresses offered the opportunity to reach audiences that may not have found the book otherwise. As recently at 2011, I met a woman in Washington, who recognized my name and related that she and her co-workers had been inspired by my words a decade earlier. My hope, and all the determination that went with it, was well placed.

With Choice Point...not so much.  I still feel it is my most important writing, but 16 years after I "finished" it, the manuscript still sits in my computer, now badly dated.  I haven't given up hope, but I have to admit that hope for Choice Point  has been tarnished by time.

Standing ready to surrender myself one more time to the hope that my words will touch and inspire the hearts of my readers, I wish for the hope that just requires the passing of time, but I know one more time that I am committing months or years of sweat and determination in support of hope.  Perseverance and determination in service of hope is required many places in life, from buying the first home to a well-funded retirement, rearing children who become responsible adults, and especially a lasting relationship.  The shining light of hope demands the grittiness of thousands of acts of intention along the way before, like a miracle one day, hope lays realized in our hands.