"Where hope falters, purpose prevails."
I see a lot of people here (and also everywhere else) putting a great amount of emphasis on sustaining hope and keeping your chin up when times are down. And I agree completely. Hope is fantastic. It energizes the spirit and can provide new vigor to old and tired bones. It can even make a person find the joy of life again.
But it is also in the nature of hope to be flighty. That's what makes it so hard, because it means risking something, something dear on a prospect that you're not quite certain will come true.
Purpose is different. For me, to have purpose is to have determination, to have drive, to be motivated to keep going to make something true, even if you're tired and broken and your muscles are all strained to breaking. Especially if you're tired. It can't give you the energy or happiness that a fulfilled hope provides, but what it will do, is force you to keep going, to force you to keep moving forward. And it will hurt. And you will be tired. But every now and again you can look back to when you first started and think "Wow. I did that? Holy cow, I did that."
Hoping can be hard. It is hard. Having a sense of purpose will keep you moving forward if you can't bring yourself to hope. And you always need to move forward, because stagnation is slow death.
