Hope is often misunderstood.
It is not certainty that things will improve.
It is not pretending that loss, injustice,
illness, or failure are temporary.
Sometimes they are not.
Hope is choosing to participate in life
despite uncertainty.
It is the willingness to believe
that pain is not the only thing that continues.
When people lose hope,
they believe the future has already been written.
It has not.
The future is still being shaped;
by you, by others,
and by choices whose consequences
have not yet arrived.
Even in dark periods of history,
people have created art.
Protected children.
Resisted cruelty.
Built communities.
Saved strangers.
Loved anyway.
Hope does not ask you to feel optimistic.
Only willing.
Willing to try again,
to repair,
to love,
to build
what you may never benefit from.
Hope is responsibility extended into the future.
And when you cannot feel hope for yourself,
borrow it from others
until you can carry it again.
When others lose theirs,
carry some for them.
That is how hope survives.