What Gives me Hope

     Times are dark. There's no denying that fact. It's almost impossible to avoid reminders that the world we once knew has come to an end. Is it any wonder so many have fallen to despair?

     I confess, I'm one of those people. I don't believe our old lives are coming back, nor do I think they should. When I was in the past I was happy, because I'd never known any other way of living, and while I knew our world was flawed, I thought that it could still be fixed. But then it fell apart, and when looking at what had come before, I was struck by how sad and lonely I really was. What kept me going in the old world was the promise that things would someday get better, what killed that world was the realization that the promise would never be kept. 

     I don't hope that things will go back to the way they used to be, and I'm deeply dismayed by all the people I see hoping that the old times will return. I understand the impulse. However horrible life was, it was familiar. You knew what to expect, and while it was difficult, if you followed the rules, you could survive. Nobody knows what will come next. We could be in for a utopia, or an even worse dystopia, and no one knows what we'll get. 

    What I do hope for is a world that exists at all. Reality isn't just made out of human thoughts and wishes, or even the wishes of those who live on earth. Reality is made out of the wants, needs, and plans of everything in the Universe, no matter how small, or far away from us, it is. Our universe isn't perfect, not even close. I don't think it was ever made to be perfect. It was made to be a universe that could be changed, a universe where, at any moment, the wants and desires of those who live in it could change it into something almost entirely different from what it started out as. 

     Everything in our Universe is acting according to its own beliefs, how it feels the world is and how it feels the world ought to be. That's what all of us are doing as well. All of us believe in a world, a world we can shape as we please, a world that will be shaped by others to be what they want as well. This is a world where everyone's voices, no matter how quietly they talk, need to be heard. 

    When I think about that, I remember that we are simply the next step in the long path the Universe has taken. We are not inevitable, but we are more able than anything that came before us to shape our world into whatever we want it to be. No matter how much people have tried, they can't make us stay silent. No matter how lost we feel, we will keep believing in a world that belongs to us. 

    When I think of that, I remember why I have hope.