What if human beings, just like animals, were to live with no affection, with no rationality? Just like animals, we would not fear the future. Our ability to project ourselves into the future allows us to consider the possibility of success or failure. Not being sure of everything, uncertainty and weakness in our lives push us to believe in a better future. And that makes our life worth living. Not being sure if tomorrow will come or not, or if we’ll still be here in the next two hours brings a certain kind of excitement to our life. Even though another day always comes bringing a new tomorrow, it makes us feel like each day could be the last one. We call that HOPE.
HOPE is like the oil in a motor. It makes all the parts of the motor work properly. The same thing happens in our lives. The feeling that tomorrow will come and will even be better than today inspires us to wake up in the morning and go on with our everyday struggles. The knowledge that we are part of a bigger community animated by HOPE is one a key part of waking up every day and believing in what we decide to do.
HOPE allows us not to give up. No matter all the things going wrong in the world, no matter the good or evil that we face or experience in our everyday life, HOPE helps us to keep working hard because we believe something new and good will someday come from our efforts. In our hopes, in our prayers, in our books, in our songs, in our culture, and even in our stories we are told to tell our children – nowhere in those is proof of HOPE but you’ll find that our elders never gave up on HOPE. Only those who kept their hope alive survived.
We are all a product of the HOPE carried out by a man and a woman who so strongly believed in this life that they both decided to bring us into it. The love between them inspired a HOPE for our future, a better future for those who would be responsible. Believing in their abilities to transmit to us all positive life values, they invested their hopes and dreams in us so that they might transcend time and spread all over the world throughout generations.
And I believe that HOPE will always be there to keep me waking up every day of my life to do things to better the small part of the world for which I’m responsible, hoping that everyone else will be doing the same with their parts. The feeling of being secure while among others comes from the combination of all our hopes. We hope that if we fall, those around us will let us lean on them until we stand up again. The word “Community” would lose its meaning if there was no HOPE. A Community such as Global Health Corps is a vivid example of people sharing their hope for a world with health equity – a communally shared hope that spreads from one person to another just like a burning fire from one dry twig to another.
Let’s then remain open to HOPE because one thing is for sure, HOPE will never let us down.