The Work of Hope
The Work of Hope
This is a personal reflection on how I process despair in current events and focus on hope, actively.
Some mornings, it’s hard for me to open the news without feeling nauseous. The scale of cruelty, the casual disregard for truth, the normalization of violence, it’s a lot to carry. Lately, I keep seeing videos of children in Gaza, begging for help, their faces covered in dust, and I can’t make peace with it.
I keep trying to hold onto hope myself, searching for something that feels honest. I want a hope I can inhabit. It is a hope that insists on engagement and demands movement. It is a hope that does not retreat, isolate, or ignore.
If I’m going to hope, it has to start with seeing things as they are.
Despair isn’t failure
When I feel despair, it doesn’t mean I’ve given up. It means I’m awake.
We often treat sadness, anger, and fear like failures, something to get rid of. But sometimes those emotions are the most honest and valid response available.
When I see fascism creeping in and a genocide unfolding while the world argues over semantics, despair feels like the right signal. It tells me I’m still connected to what’s human.
The work isn’t to silence that feeling. The work is to not let it paralyze me.
A different kind of hope
The kind of hope I want isn’t blind. It’s not the “everything happens for a reason” kind.
It’s the quiet, stubborn belief that what I do still matters, even when I can’t see the result.
That kind of hope doesn’t erase grief or fear; it just walks alongside them.
It says, “I see how bad this is, and I’m still showing up.”
It’s the kind that builds something small and real in a world that’s falling apart.
Kindness as a choice
Kindness is another word that can mean many things. To me, it’s not smiles or slogans. It’s choosing to stay decent when it costs something.
Kindness that listens when anger would feel better.
Kindness that protects someone else when silence would be easier.
Kindness that stays open when the world keeps teaching me to shut down, when hate hums in the background like white noise and cruelty starts to sound ordinary.
That kind of kindness isn’t passive. It’s work. It’s resistance.
Rewiring, but not to look away
If there’s rewiring I need to do, it’s not about pushing out negativity. For me, it’s about connecting outrage to purpose.
To let pain sharpen empathy instead of dull it.
To let grief feed action instead of exhaustion.
To let hope mean something heavier, not comfort but commitment.
Hope alone doesn’t change anything.
Hope with action, with engagement, does.
Hope
I don’t want a hope that protects me from despair.
I want one that stands next to it, unflinching.
Maybe that’s the rewiring I need, not to see less of the world but to keep seeing it fully, to name what’s wrong, and to still choose to care.
Because what’s happening to the people and the children of Gaza is wrong.
The cruelty and authoritarianism that has crept into all three branches of American government is wrong.
Failing to protect the lives of American children in schools, churches, and theaters in the name of an unbounded notion of liberty is wrong.
And if hope means anything, it has to mean refusing to look away.
