With a View to Hope
A journal on hope in a world gone mad.
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What in the world am I looking at?
I was listening to the crumbling waves as it spread itself over the shifting sands. Sun rays were lounging on my skin which gave me a sense that all is well. Better than well, it seems perfect. My eyes wander to the horizon, and I thought the ocean could hold all my dreams; Dreams of contentment and purpose, present and future, personal and communal.
But dreams are slippery like shallow water; they are ideas floating in a kiddy pool and easily deflated, spilled into oblivion. We all want to sustain our dreams, the American dream, the retirement plan, and a prosperous future, but our world is too twisted for that now. The open canvas of the sea propels us to hope for more, but instead, we find ourselves in an ocean of fear. Do I have what it takes to sail on hopes and dreams, or am I sinking on a tanker flooded by fatalism?
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Sometimes I feel hope has been reduced to a lottery, only the lucky ones are able to hit the jackpot. As the world continues to focus on and champions their own dreams and desires, it does it at the cost of everyone else. Our individualized happiness demands the tribute of our neighbour's joy and the cycle ripples into our communities, our politics, education, and so forth.
It's globalization some say.
But someone has to pay for our happy meal, and like a drug, it requires a greater sacrifice by the others each time. Whether it is the factory workers across the pond to the amusement park actors/actresses who smile and dance for our make-believe Neverland. Each one hopes that one day, maybe one day, their dreams will come true.
Are we there yet?
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Our world has gone mad, and I can only hear the screams and bitter reposts of those who felt they have been wronged. Their dreams were taken away, their hope ravaged and left hanging on a tree. Their frustrations are locked in capital letters and their outlet is their network. Social media are the vein of their outcry and all their friends and cohorts stand chained on the firing line, punctuated with headlines from unwanted media outlets.
I didn't want to read it, but I did not have a choice. It was smeared onto my news feed from someone I thought I cared.
Hope can't be found in fellow sufferers. Maybe comradery and at best, momentary inspirations. But hope? No, that's too precious and rare to be bestowed lightly by mere humans. Human beings are much too prone to disappointment and corruption to be a symbol of hope.
The light switch is beyond our reach, now what?
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It is dark in here, but it is better than staring at hopeless faces.
Artificial light is all we can summon, and yet they are dimmed and short-lived. Politicians and idols placed on a pedestal as we cast all our hopes and dreams on to. We laid our hands on them, imbuing them with a guarantee that they cannot sustain. When they fail, we laid our hands on them, but this time as villains and monsters. This time and every time, they are the beholder of all that is good and bad in our lives. The responsibility rests on them, and the darkness is because of them, so we like to think.
Are we not accountable? Is everyone else at fault except for me? If I make fewer waves and hide from despairing faces, would my world grow brighter?
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I can vote for change, I can build a parking lot, and I may even have moments of goodwill to all mankind. But hope I do not have, hope I cannot offer and hope I can't manufacture.
It seems...
Hope must find me. Hope must be born. Hope is a miracle.
It is out of this world. It is not by mere mortals, and it is not in substances and the dulling of our senses. You can't legalize hope, it is beyond the law. You can't code it nor decentralize it. Hope is freely given and received in desperation. You can't bargain with hope, because you have nothing to offer it, but It can offer you everything.
What a wonderful notion, what a beautiful thought, if hope is merely an idea.
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How can a mere thought and notion understand this mad, mad world? Would theories and ideas lend its empathy in your darkest hours? When your work is taken, your health ending, and your child is no more? Would you feel comforted by simply a positive outlook of hope?
If hope cannot relate nor experienced in an encounter with another. I would have believed in futility. Hope must know my pain, and he must know all of our pains. The personhood of hope is what binds us to reality; not the certainty of defeat, but the actuality of victory.
Hope fights for us, he knows us, he gave up everything for us, he opened the window to a view of hope. He is with us. Emmanuel.
Who's your hope?
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All images by Calvin Sun 2018
35mm / Leica M6 / Film