HOPE

We were as affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11 as you were. While IFL can provide therapy and coping strategies, we cannot provide certainty or grant hope, either to you or to ourselves.

But hope is necessary. Without it, who would dare to get out of bed in the morning?

For us, hope is a gift of the Creator. Yet when horrors like the events of September 11 happen, despair (the absence of hope) is an understandable first reaction. Have we human beings still not learned how to live in peace with ourselves and each other? IFL exists because the answer is “Not yet.”

When we have hope, nothing can stop us. With hope, there's no guarantee of success. But hope helps us entertain the possibility that things just might turn out all right. Not because we lie around, passively waiting for that to happen, but because with hope we are liberated to do the necessary work, never accepting momentary setbacks as permanent.

September 11 was no ordinary day, but it was just a day. Terrorism terrifies, but only to the degree that we let it. Despair destroys, but hope brings life to life. As playwright Samuel Beckett put it, “I must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.”

By David Copelin