Have Hope, You Shall Be Healed

By Anil Amar

Hope entices us with a promise that sustains when all else is gone. It's inherent and innate, and generates courage to continue on a path we cannot see. Nurturing hope in our hearts reminds us, that things can and will get better. Hope unlocks the stranglehold of fear, frustration and uncertainty.

Dr Henry Viscardi was born without legs. He spent his first seven years as a charity patient in a hospital. He struggled as a severely crippled child and as a horribly deformed young man. The world was unkind, heaping challenges upon him — a legless man in a body 3 feet 8 inches tall! He survived because he refused to succumb to hopelessness. He held strongly onto his belief that all life must have a purpose — and that at the right time, his would be revealed.

At age 27, he got fitted with artificial legs. Suddenly a whole new world opened to him — his life was transformed. He began helping disabled veterans at a hospital during the World War II.

He married the woman of his dreams, and together they had four daughters. Dr Viscardi founded the Long Island Human Resources Centre for the Disabled. He transformed adversity into opportunity, teaching thousands of physically challenged people to have faith and belief — in themselves and in their potential.

In a speech he said, "Hope is a duty, not a luxury. To hope is not to dream - but to turn dreams into reality. Blessed are those who dream dreams, and are willing to pay the price to make them come true. As for me, I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon. I seek opportunity, not security. I want to dream and to build, to fall and to succeed. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid to think and act for myself. I have a wish for you. I suppose the conventional thing for me to do, would be to wish you success and happiness for the rest of your lives. But success and happiness, as the world measures it, is too easy. I wish you meaning — for all the remaining years of your life."

Life isn't easy — there are no guarantees. It is a series of challenges, some bigger than others, all of which we must face. Seemingly unconquerable at times, obstacles are often just detours we have to take, to meet our ultimate goals. No matter what adversity we face, we must believe it is conquerable, and that we will emerge stronger because of it.

As a child, Suzy could not learn to read and write. Doctors said she was retarded. Growing up, she became unmanageable, and was sentenced to two years in a reformatory. She worked hard to overcome her inabilities for 15 hours a day. Her huge efforts paid off when she earned her high school diploma. She emerged from the reformatory a changed person with dreams. But misfortune lay in wait as she suffered a stroke, resulting in erasing her ability to read and write. She was financially untenable. To make matters worse, she became pregnant without benefit of marriage. With help and support from her father, Suzy fought back from the depths of her tortured life.

In order to proceed with her life, she reasoned that, despite her unfortunate situation, she was still the person she had always been; that her life wasn't over - it had just become different. She noticed that many couldn't see beyond their adversity-shattered lives, and see that their futures were still bright. She wondered why people allowed their existing realities to obscure their possibilities. The ability to re-look at and re-create goals is a matter of faith and hope — involving self-worth, the ability to adjust to life's many changes, and finding fresh ways to tackle problems. It's based on self-respect and knowledge that one's past experiences have helped make us the unique person we are.

She started taking courses at a community college. On completion, she applied to and was accepted by the State Medical School to study medicine. Suzy became a doctor — healing others — an eloquent testimony to her faith, hope, self-belief and perseverance. Hope and faith go hand in hand. Have you ever been at the end of your rope with nothing to hold onto - but hope? If you didn't have faith, you'd have crashed to the ground. Hope gives us the courage to hang on, while faith gives us the belief that if we can hang on with hope, help will come. To make hope come home to roost, we need to find that faith inside us — which tells us where hope is.

Using Faith To Banish Fear

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." ~ Franklin D Roosevelt

Abully often beat up Ben, who lived in a state of constant fear, defeat and self-loathing.

Ben's teacher encouraged him to read books about heroes and champions. Ben did so, visualizing himself as the heroes he read about, even dreaming about it at night.

One day, when going home he saw the bully waiting for him. Ben panicked and started to run - then, remembering his resolve, he stopped and returned with clenched teeth.

Ben fought with determined ferocity. The surprised bully lost his appetite for the fight — and ran away.

Ben hurt all over, but it was worth it! It was a great day in Ben's life — he'd overcome his life-consuming fear, lack of self-esteem and the defeat in his heart, and had found - self-respect.

He hadn't become physically stronger, but the equation had changed. Actually, the only difference was that a new Ben had emerged from within - one with faith in himself! Because he had taken a stand - in the face of fear - that he would no longer be pushed around, he had transcended his usual self, and emerged an unbeatable winner. His determination that he would run no more, no matter what - had wrought a change from deep within his life.

Man is a mix of opposites. While he has within him a touch of divinity, he also has an equal mix of the not so divine. How much of each is manifested, is a choice he makes from moment to moment, depending upon his life condition. In every aspect of life, too, we find ourselves faced with an array of opposites. One set of opposites that is most meaningful, is faith and fear. Being opposites, they can't co-exist. The degree to which we lack faith - is the degree to which we are vulnerable to fear. Generally, we are a mass of fears - so much so, that it is a wonder that we can get past all of them to accomplish anything. We remain imprisoned by our fears, worries, doubts and anxieties. For instance, we fear being alone, fear people's opinions, the dark, the future, change, failure, rejection, pain, truth, life, death, growing old, etc., etc.

Fear has its genesis in the fact that our faith in whatever belief system we profess, is not unshakable, and that we lack faith - in ourselves, in our purpose in life, and in our ability to move our lives to its fruition. When things start to go wrong and beyond our control, our faith becomes shaky. This allows doubt to begin gnawing at our mind - and, that permits fears to take root in our life. Fear comes from the feeling that we are puny, powerless and helpless. When we belittle ourselves, we experience a total lack of control, and deny the greatness, the power — the divinity we inherently possess.

Failure undermines our self-confidence, and repeated setbacks create a pattern in our lives, leading us to plant seeds of doubt in our own abilities. This handicaps us till we reach the point when we render ourselves incapable of dealing with most of our own issues effectively and satisfactorily. Taken a step further, since everything is psychosomatic, our fearful mind manifests as illness and disease in our body. It's hard to trust someone or something when danger threatens and everything seems to be collapsing around us. Fear comes to us more easily than faith. If fear can banish faith, so too, must faith be able to banish fear. A pendulum swings on both sides. Faith isn't pretending that our problems don't exist, nor is it simply blind optimism. Faith takes us beyond our problems to the hope and strength we need to nurture our lives with.

My mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, teaches, "So long as we are alive, we are bound to experience various fears and worries. These are like clouds that block the light of the sun. Regardless of appearances, the sun rises with the same majesty even when it is raining or windy. So long as the sun of faith in one's heart continues to blaze, one's life will shine with happiness."

Everything has value — even failure! In life, nothing is wasted. Everything has a purpose - a lesson to teach. Fear, too, has its positive aspect. If we didn't fear danger; our lives would be in constant peril. A small child must be taught to fear the traffic on the roads or electrical household gadgets. Fear of accidents makes us cautious in our daily chores. We need not fear fear — we need to respect it, use it, and befriend it.