We Are A Generation At War

BY: Jammie Matheson

‘Hopeologist' may be a title or byname you have yet to hear of.

I am doing my best to help people around the globe become familiar with the term, and I understand that there is a responsibility to create positivity in the lives of those among us. People are searching for hope, but most will end up empty-handed.

You see, my concept of hope and hopeology is that hope is a gift; it must be given. If you have lost hope, you cannot find it. You cannot just go to the store and buy it for yourself. Hope is the one thing you can give someone else and inspire their life for the better, even if you do not have hope for yourself. So please, stop searching and start giving!

By sharing the “Dynamic Principles of Hope," a curriculum I have created, I strive to inspire others to adopt a more positive mindset. I have the responsibility to help people learn how to trust their inner voice. This trust allows us to find the determining factors holding us back from our potential.

As a Hopeologist, I aim to enable those without hope to move forward and transition from hopeless to hopeful, instilling and bringing back confidence in our decisions and lives. At FLD Industries, we like to say, "Become FLD! Fast, Loud, and Driven!"

Looking at my brothers and sisters in humanity, I see so many trapped in a cycle of hopelessness where we often feel there is no way out. We are an entire generation paralyzed in thought, lost in desperation and depression, and left wondering and wandering without a guide. We are absent from our relationships, becoming self-proclaimed victims regarding our finances and not taking responsibility for the part we have played.

While searching for hope, we become enticed by religions that take our money and time, offering the promise of faith and good fortune. Yet somehow, in the end, we are left with empty pockets, only to sing praises accompanied by the sour notes of an out-of-tune piano. We, as a generation, NEED thought-provoking leaders to combat this situation. I use the word combat because this is war.

This generation I am a part of is not defined by age, gender, or the balance carried in our 401k. Nor are we defined by the number of times we have stood in line at the soup kitchen pouring from a ladle serving others, holding out our bowl receiving nourishment, or reading a chapter from "Chicken Soup for the Soul," trying our best to gain perspective.

The side of the counter we stand on in the soup kitchen and the side of the world we were born on is of little consequence. There is one common thread that binds this generation together, and it is the fact that somewhere along the way, we have lost hope.

The knotted threads that have stitched this generation together are our past decisions – choices made before having a proper foundation of understanding of the lessons we had not yet learned.

Not all the religions I speak of are biblical. They are social, physical, financial, and intellectual, seeming to pull us apart, one stitch at a time, until our hope is lost. How do we remove the control that these false Gods have over us?

These unlearned lessons would likely have changed the decisions that were made. How do we surround ourselves with positivity and regain values to seek the growth we want to make in our lives and the world for the future? I call this "The Science of Hopeology," referring to the process in which we start from hopelessness and become hopeful somewhere along the journey.

The timing is not always up to us. This journey has taken me 21 years.

How It All Started

The day of my diagnosis was the beginning of one of the best and worst experiences of my life. I had stage 4 breast cancer. It was a very aggressive cancer, and my prognosis was bleak without targeted treatments. Even with six months of chemotherapy, followed by 6 ½ weeks of daily radiation, multiple surgeries, and five more years of oral therapy, my chance of survival was about 12%.

Some would think that my day of hopeless desperation was the day of my diagnosis. However, the day I truly lost hope was some months later, while on the phone with our mortgage company.

Back then, we received aggressive calls multiple times a day, with the tactics used against us becoming increasingly vicious as days passed. Like many people struggling with an illness, we had found ourselves behind on our bills and mortgage. It took every penny we had to move forward with the treatments that could save my life.

One particular collection agent told me that "my life was of no consequence to my family at that point because I had created this situation we were in financially. If I died, it would most likely relieve the stress from those around me, and my husband and children were young enough that, eventually, my family could recover financially. Most likely, they wouldn't even remember me." Those were some of the most hurtful words ever spoken to me.

In truth, I was the reason my family was losing our home. We were told we had to vacate the property, which had been in my husband's family for generations. This home we loved was much more than just a house.

And this agent was right. If, by some fluke, I survived, we were young enough to recover financially, depending on your definition of recovery. If I died, the chances were high that in a few years, I would be a distant memory in my children's minds. Their ages at the time of the diagnosis were 7 and 5, and our youngest was only 10 months old.

But in my eyes, I had one option - I had to choose to believe, discover, and hope. I could have given up at any point, and no one would have questioned or blamed me.

Nevertheless, I chose to affirm my faith and only focus on my future. Little did I know then that the steps I started to put into place would lead to the "Dynamic Principals of Hope."

I had to be honest with myself and others about how we really got here, taking accountability and learning about the things I did not understand. I would not be a victim of this disease or the debt collectors. Even though I had temporarily lost hope, I knew there were always options regardless of the situation. It was then I finally felt like I was going to survive this ugly disease that was trying to destroy our lives, and I have shared my story of this in "Ignite Your Faith."

During my chemo treatments, I would read “Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor’s Soul." I don't remember all of the stories, but I do remember how they made me feel. I felt like I could make a difference.

I had a purpose on this great earth that is much larger than me. I could find a silver lining somewhere within this illness.

Looking forward to the future I wanted to create for our family, I put my head down, dug in my heels, and went to work. I certainly don't want to gloss over the devastation of cancer and the effects it can have. If you know, you would understand, but if you don’t, I pray you never find out.

While working things through with our mortgage company, I learned about loss mitigation and bank negotiations. When I started, I had no idea what I was doing. The skills of trying to negotiate with the debt collectors and the mortgage company taught me things that I could have only learned from going through this experience.

In the end, I survived to the surprise of many, including the medical staff. I had a newfound hope. I also understood that we weren't the only ones going through this. We were never the only ones in the infusion room at chemo; indeed, we were not the only ones facing financial hardships. I knew that I had to do something to help them.

So I expanded my education however I could – one might say it all stemmed from some vendetta towards that callous debt collector, and initially, it was. But during this process, I learned that sometimes when we set out to prove others wrong, we end up finding ourselves.

I worked hard to get my mortgage and insurance licenses. The point of that was not necessarily to make money but to understand the concepts and principles behind the rules and policies they represented. I later earned my real estate license and currently still sell real estate in Idaho to this day.

With a lot of hard work and prayer, we were able to save our home. I have held several jobs in the years beyond cancer, always working towards my goal of helping others in the same situation we had been in.

At some point, the word got out of how our desperation to save our home turned into a passion for helping others. People then started showing up, and I began to do bank negotiations for families at risk of losing their homes due to illness or unforeseen circumstances. If the negotiations went well, we could get their mortgage re-written or placed in a hardship status. And for families fighting to keep their homes and food on their table, I would often do those transactions for free.

Hope-rocks

That is my story of how I lost hope. As I stated at the beginning, hope is a gift; it must be given to you. Hope is the one thing we can give others, even when we don't have hope ourselves. My concept of Hopeology was taught to me by my 5-year-old son each day while I was going through chemo.

During the six months of my treatments, my son would bring me a gift each day…a white rock. He would find these pebbles on the playground at school, in the driveway, or sometimes on the ditch bank at the end of our pasture. Often, his friends would join him in his search.

Every day he would present them to me with excitement. He would come bouncing in the door after morning kindergarten and share with me his treasure, representing his hope. We called them "Hope-rocks."

When he proudly handed them to me, he would say with a smile, “I hope you get better, momma!”. Then he would give me a tight squeeze around my neck or leg (depending on how big of a hurry he was in) and be off to the next big adventure of his day. (Hope-rocks.com)

We would place these rocks in heart-shaped trinkets and jewelry boxes that I had, and when I was finally done with chemo treatments, the boxes were full. I realized then that, quite literally, my heart was full of hope. This gift was not just a plane ol' rock. It represented so much more. It became exactly what it represented – the concept that hope is a gift. I had lost it all, and it had been given back to me by a child with no worldly possessions or intellect beyond his wise age of 5.

Over the years, I have shared this story with many people. I also shared my hope rocks with others when they needed to hope for themselves. I am now down to my last precious box. This heart-shaped box I have left filled with these gifts of hope was a keepsake that my husband gave me as he arrived home from a work trip just a few hours before our sweet child was born.

This concept of hope has become a true principle, changing the lives of many.

How do we teach our children the concept of hope so that they can understand the principles behind it in the future? The answer to this question was eloquently stated by a gentleman named Harold.

When starting to share this concept that hope is a gift, I asked people to share with me what gives them hope in their lives each day. These gifts of hope have impacted me so greatly, but they are not meant for me. They are to be shared with the world.

To be a thought leader for hope, I needed a place where people could go and share their gift of hope because everyone can be a "Hopeologist." This place we meet to share our messages will also be a safe space where those searching for hope can come to find it. A home for hope.

The first people I asked to help me in this project of building a home for Hope were people I have a personal connection to. This included friends, family, and acquaintances who believed that they had every reason in the world not to have hope at some point in their lives. Harold was one of them.

This humbling man is only 43. He is so gnarled up with rheumatoid arthritis that he looks and feels closer to 80. When I asked him to send me a 20-30 second audio/video of what gives him hope, he stated that most days, he had little, if any, hope. He explained that this disease had destroyed so much of his life in the last few years. He was now only a shadow of the man he used to be and had no reason for hope. He had no reason to look forward to his future or feel hopeful. It was then that the phone went silent as he was trying to hold his emotions in.

After several minutes, he began again. He talked about how he really wanted to be there for his daughters. He proclaimed, "Maybe I do want to help myself, so I can give hope to my daughters. I guess I still need to be here for them.”

As it was one of his darkest days, he excused himself from the conversation to ponder. Afterward, I sent him the outline of the "Dynamic Principals of Hope." This was on March 2nd. He had been working on the principals, and we spoke again on March 8th, but I only heard from him regarding the matter on April 19th.

Apparently, he had spent the last several weeks pondering and using the outline. He then shared his powerful message of what he had discovered and felt while on his journey to becoming hopeful, and what he shared brought me to tears.

“Hope," he stated, "Hope is a very misconstrued word. People say things such as I hope I land this new job or that my kids do well in school and attend college. Or, I hope my car starts in this cold weather, or I hope to win the lottery. That's not hope; that is desire".

“True hope, to me, is an acronym that stands for ‘Help Other People, Every Day’ because the Lord Jesus taught us to love thy neighbor and each other. That's what true hope is. Remember that the lord God gave us three great gifts: hope, faith, and love. Hope is the first, and love is the most important. I have faith that you will remember to love and help each other."

This is a call to action for my friends, brothers, and sisters in humanity. We are at war with negative thoughts that have occupied our minds. This battle we fight is also against the misguided actions of others, and even sometimes ourselves, fighting against the things we have said and done that cause us to lose hope and perspective so that we no longer believe in ourselves.

When we continually engage in these negative thoughts and misguided actions, we can lose trust and question our inner voice. We often choose not to listen and, ultimately, become deaf. This then leads us to make poor choices in our greatest times of need because we no longer hear the inner voice of our conscience.

My mission, my vision, and my wish for you are to put a stop to our endless search for hope. I want to be able to provide a home we could reach out to with only the touch of our fingertips in the exact moments when we need hope the most and be able to find it.

My wish is to build everyone a home for hope. I want to present a curriculum that helps us understand the "Dynamic Principles of Hope," thus enabling us to navigate through the process, learn to hope once again, trust our inner voice, and become FLD – Fast, Loud, and Driven in our lives!

I believe that hope is an action, not a thought process or a state of mind. Rather, it is a spark that will help ignite the flame of transformation – igniting humanity in a movement of hope.

About the Author:

Jammie Matheson has been deemed a "Hopeologist" by her mentors, patients, clients, and peers. She has been through difficult times, taking those hard experiences, learning the lessons behind them, and creating a business to help others go from hopeless to hopeful.

Along with her professional licenses as a real estate agent in Idaho, she is a Registered Polysomnographic Technologist and a Certified Sleep Educator. However, she prizes her titles as wife, mother, and published author the most.

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