Over the years, I have thought about a common experience that comes up in shidduchim. Sometimes it happens before a date or even when I know someone is working on an idea for me. I find myself counting on this one thing working out. I start believing that if it doesn’t, the disappointment will just be too hard. I’ve thought about how to manage this, and recently a metaphor occurred to me.
Hope is like a plant. When hope is being very concentrated on a particular outcome, I can snip off just one offshoot and transfer it to a pot of its own. There it can flourish and continue to propagate, protected from any disappointment that threatens the original plant.
