It's interesting to me how life can sometimes unfold.  It's all about timing.  I'd returned the astrophysics books that I was enjoying to the library, because I never had anyone to share the subject with.  Being unable to share all of the wonderful things I was learning somehow dimmed my enthusiasm.  Now, I have just learned that my new downstairs neighbour shares my love of the subject!  I've now got to dig out the notes from the books, and I might end up going back to the library for the one that I was in the middle of.  However, if I'd known he was coming, I never would have returned the books, and would be further along in my studies than I am now.  

I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.  "If I'd only known" is something quite a few of us say, and quite often, at that.  Perhaps it would have been better for me to continue to study.  Perhaps if I'd focused on hope rather than on hopelessness, I'd have been ready for this instead of scrambling to get ready for this.  We tend to give up, and it seems that just after we do, the thing comes along that we'd given up on ever seeing.  Like love that shows up when you've given up looking for it, things unfold at the time that's right.  That right time is rarely early enough for us.  There's a certain element of strength and courage needed to continue to hope in the face of all the odds against hope.  There's a certain amount of vision required to see the brighter day on the other end of the darkest tunnel.  

There's more needed for us to reach the end of that tunnel than we ourselves can do, and that's where the ultimate courage comes in for each and every one of us.  We have to trust.  As babies, we trust everyone and everything, but life teaches us gradually to trust no one, to believe in nothing.  Then, life teaches us the ultimate lesson.....facing ourselves and finding the courage to reach out and trust again, this time bridging a canyon of learned fears, facing the blackness that lives within us and that is more consuming than death.  Just as with everything else in life, it unfolds at the right time for it, and we find in that right time just the person we needed.  It's up to us to reach out and grab the opportunity before it passes, to have the courage to have hope rather than giving in to hopelessness.  If we can do that, we can do anything.  Crossing that bridge, facing down that blackness and reaching out for hope tests us to our limits and takes us beyond anything we ever thought we could do.  That's when we discover what we're really made of.  Once we've done that, no one will ever have power over us again.  Timing is everything.  Watch.  Hope.  Grab with both hands and hold on tight.