always-hopeOne of my friends was visiting recently from overseas  and he said something that really made me think.  He said, “I’ve been coming to America for 32 years.  It’s always been the land of hope and promise.  This year it’s not that way.  It seems the people are defeated.  They have no hope.”  “How sad,” I thought, “that we are giving this poor impression to people around the world.”  We certainly are NOT defeated and I have lots of hope. We are a long way from being defeated…by people from other parts of the world and/or people within our own country.  This is the USA.  It is my country.  It is your country.  It has always been what we, the people, have made it.  It is my hope that this year, we the people stand up for our rights and fight for what is ours.  I will not be defeated by cancer, burglars, the economy or poor leadership.  It is time for us to take a good hard look at our values, the behavior of our children and ourselves, the compassion we have for others, and be brave enough to make things right. It is time for us to thank our military men and women for fighting for our freedom, our police for attempting to protect us, our fire fighters for attempting to save our lives and our property and quit worshiping celebrities who make a lot of money but are poor role models and offer no real value to our lives or even their own.

It’s time to stop waiting for someone else to make our lives better.   We must stop listening to everyone else telling us how bad things are.  Hope is a choice.  Winning is a choice.  We must stop waiting for someone else to fight for our freedom, our success, our lives.  We have a choice. We can choose to be apathetic and do nothing or we can focus on what we CAN DO instead of what we can’t.  Hope isn’t dead, it’s just been taking a nap.   Wake up!

It is time for us to decide what we want and go after it with fierce determination.  Set your goals now for a better life and start taking the steps to make it happen.  I know we can do this. I am more than enough.  You are more than enough.