My thoughts today....

Once.

I did it once.....rose up for a nanosecond onto the ball of my left foot. Sigh.

BUT!!!

Once is better than zero. So we have some improvement. That was at physio this morning at the crack of dawn. More to follow on Monday.......

So today has been a good day so far. Progress, however infinitesimal, is still progress. And a good friend had medical tests come back clear, so more reason to be happy.

I copied a quote from a blog a few days ago about hope. My word for the year.

"If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream."~Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968

It was the bit about needing hope in order to be that stuck with me. Without hope, there is no courage, and without courage, we cannot be or do anything. Hope mobilises people. Like me in a physical sense. But in a greater sense, it is what the entire world needs right now. We need vitality, and there is no vitality if there is no hope. Vitality means life.

This morning, the UK figures for the GDP in the last quarter were published and we are now "officially" in recession. The entire country did not need the figures to know this. We have known for months. It appears that our leaders had their heads in the sand. But the expected drop was 1.2%. That was a trifle optimistic. It is bigger than that. 1.5%. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the radio about how many people were out of work, until one lone soul phoned in and said, hey, aren't you forgetting that 95% of the workforce have jobs?

We tend to focus on the bad things, and if we do that to the exclusion of all else, we would never have any hope. Now, I am not for a second going to ignore the misery and monumental problems so many are or will be facing. Far from it. I have written about that before. It is there and it affects each and every one of us in one way or another. But it gives me hope too, that people will start noticing people more. Eyes will see more. 95% of the workforce can help the 5%. If we look around, we will see need, and hopefully we will act individually or corporately to address that need.

I, along with the rest of the world, watched the inauguration of America's 44th president on Tuesday, and I listened to his speech. It was superb. He has no illusions about the immediate future, and we need to be reminded of that reality before we can start to fix things. We have the generations ahead of us to consider, and he certainly made sure we all knew that what lies ahead will be difficult. But he stood tall and proud and I thought to myself....he is not afraid of the challenges which face him. He is facing them head on, with confidence, and he has hope. I, on the other hand, would be running for the hills if I had to change places with him.

No matter what your political persuasions were or are, he is now the leader of the western world as well as the United States, and the entire globe is expecting much from this one man. He is however, human and will inevitably get things wrong at times, and we will not always agree with the things he says or does. But he has the ability to inspire confidence in people, and he deserves our respect and support, and most especially, our prayers. A new age has dawned. He embodies hope to so many. And the key here is exactly what he said....we are all in this together, and together we have to find a way to work it out. It will be hard. It will mean changes. but there is hope. Always.

You know, going back to that radio phone in this morning, one suggestion was that we have our governments move to coalition government like they did during the wars. Call a halt to the petty side swipes at different parties, and come up with governments of unity so everyone works together to address the problems facing us. Use the best of brains from all parties to get us out of this pit. And believe me, I don't think we have any idea how much trouble the financial world/banks are in yet. They have not confessed everything by a long way.

Now coalition government in the face of the world financial crisis makes sense to me. Probably because I am female and I think that talking is good. Working together is even better, and as all mothers know, sorting out our differences is better when dealt with by talking instead of sulking, or snarling or kicking under the table. Haven't you ever watched parliament on tv and wanted to storm into the chamber with a whistle, give everyone a time out and tell them to stop behaving like children???? I have. Every single time I watch the shenanigans. Give me strength, they even throw things at each other. Coalition. Behaving like adults. Working together.....I have hope that this may well happen. Look who President Obama has as his defence secretary.

I would also make the lot of them, especially the bankers, own up to all the misdeeds, and then say they are sorry, for heaven's sake. We all need the truth, and then we can make a plan. Fix things. Just like I needed the physio to tell me that I need to work even harder to get moving. She told me the truth and thereby gave me the tools, and in doing so, hope as well.

But I can't just sit here at my computer and say I have hope. Hope - vitality - courage. That means getting up and doing something about it. In all circumstances. A call to action. So I am levering my rear end off this chair now, and I am going to go and stand on the stair and do 50 dips this time. My record is 45.

In all things and in all ways, I will grab at life, celebrate small achievements and not waste the time and opportunities which come my way. And I have a date, by the way for Bath. I go in on 15th March. It is longer to wait than I would like, but I am just thankful I have a date. Hope, you see, does not have an expiry date.

I am off..... on my toes..... to the stairs.....and then I may just zap down to parliament with my whistle.