It's interesting that when we don't feel hope in our hearts, we usually feel its opposite, which is despair. Sometimes we've experienced so many disappointments in our life that it's hard for us to have hope that something better will still come our way. Yet, if we adopt the attitude of despair, we close ourselves off from all possibility that something new and different and better can happen in our lives. The sign over the entrance in Dante's Inferno was, "Abandon hope, all you who enter here." Abandoning hope and opting for despair is coming to a premature conclusion about life. It's like deciding who committed the crime when we are only half-way through a mystery novel. We may be tempted to quit reading because we feel that we already know 'who done it.' Yet the precise point of the mystery novel is the unexpected twist that leads to a surprise ending we could never have guessed. Our life is like a surprise birthday cake with candles we can't blow out. Anything can happen— even the very best thing— so why not hope for the best?