Day of Hope #52

Thursday April 13, 2017

Goal: Find Inspiration

Quote: “Inspire others without expecting anything in return. True joy is in giving.”  – Debasish Mridha

The day before my Day of Hope I drew an angle card. I explained the angle cards in my Day of Hope #36. My card for the week is inspiration. I thought that was an exciting word to get. We can all use more inspiration. I am working with another detour today.

I had planned to do a tour of Old Town Eagle. I was going to go to every single shop on the street called Old Eagle Road one after another. No matter what the shop was called I knew I would find something in each one that was new to me. I planned to discover new places as there are so many new buildings and stores. That did not happen. It was raining. I did not feel like trudging in the rain from store to store. I had also planned to stop at a small park there in the Eagle along the route and journal. Insert the detour.

I had to consult the bucket list binder for “inspiration” on what to do. Yes, I have an actual binder that has 10,000 bucket list items for ideas. In the binder there was an idea that suggested telling someone how much you care about them. Well, I decided one person was not enough. Of course, I had to do thirteen someone’s instead. I had the day off work, and I went to Rembrandts café in Eagle, Idaho and sat in the back corner table to enjoy my day of hope.  

Everyone raves about this restaurant, but I have not had time to go, so here I am, finally making time to try it. I love their spice tea and I ordered the country eggs benedict for breakfast. It was amazing to just sit, relax, and enjoy wonderful food and friendly service. I will come here more often for sure. I sat and wrote thirteen letters to thirteen people that, “inspire” me. I am letting them all know why they are special, and what qualities I believe they have that inspire not only myself, but others as well. At first, I thought it would be hard to find thirteen people, but to my surprise, I ended up having to narrow it down to thirteen people. I realized I have lots of friends and family members to choose from that I consider inspiring.

I then headed to Boise to pick up my dear friend Mr. D. We are going to the movie theater to see a movie called The Shack, based on the Novel by William P. Young. This movie was intense. I just don’t know how to explain it. It was not quite what I expected to see. The main character is Mack. Through a series of abuse in his childhood his mother leaves him with his abusive father. As an adult he is married and has three children. His youngest ends up disappearing and they cannot find her. They conclude that she has been a victim of a serial killer and found her dress in a shack. Mack goes to handle it himself and heads to the shack.

There is a trio of strangers that help him. Through a series of spirits and events he is finally able to move beyond his grief. He wakes up in the hospital. I don’t want to give away the ending but no matter what your views on the afterlife are it’s a movie worth seeing. I am not sure what I expected really, but I did not expect to feel anger towards the universe (or God, whatever your word is that you want to use).

 I consider myself a very loving and caring person, and I believe in the universe and getting what you want but after seeing this movie I realized I had been angry for many years. I have blamed the universe for several of the really bad things that happened in my past. Some are the anger in others, death of several family members, etc. This movie helped me to let go of some of that anger and I felt lighter and not so alone. Bad things happen, but maybe if you don’t see them as bad, just as life in general, it helps you to get through it.

We went to dinner and talked and talked about the movie and how it could help him with loss and pain. Such a great day. To finish out my day I stopped at Dairy Queen to get me a Heath shake, like the candy bar. A girl at work had given me a gift certificate earlier in the week. When I opened the card again to get the gift certificate out to pay, I realized her note said thanks for being an ‘inspiration’. Well, that fit right in with my inspiration day and made it come full circle. Another successful day of hope.

My lesson of hope: I was expecting to get inspiration and I did, but my day also allowed me to give inspiration to others. It was also inspiring for me to see that watching something for only a few hours can release stress you didn’t even know you had. It can change your perception going forward if you let it.