Hope everlasting
Lots of people are freaking out about a bunch of things these days: Donald Trump and Elon Musk gutting the federal government, AI is coming for our jobs, and UAPs/orbs are in our skies.
A lot of the concerns stem from disruption—because change is scary. But change is the norm. Instead of resisting change, what if we found ways to make it work for us?
The key is not to fixate on how change disrupts the status quo - to do so is to lose yourself in the funhouse maze. But to always focus on how we can adapt to the changes using hope as our guide.
The Role of Hope
This is a message of hope.
We often tie our emotions to external outcomes—the sitting president, the price of Bitcoin, our team winning the Super Bowl. But when we hang our hopes in these uncontrollable forces, we invite not only moments of joy but also attachment, disappointment, and frustration. Before we know it, our lives are dictated by things beyond our control.
The most important thing you can do in times of change is to understand yourself. Get intimate with your own mind. Familiarize yourself with your own needs/wants.
The external world is chaotic, always shifting. But your awareness—the “you” that observes it all—is the one thing you truly have agency over (and depending on who you ask, the only thing that actually exists :O). Everything we want, everything we fight for, is based on how we imagine it will make us feel. But internalizing hope unlocks the ability to be more intentional about our next step instead of waiting on the kneejerk response to the next catastrophe.
The Call vs. The Response
We often focus on how we respond to signals we’re receiving from the external world, but what’s triggering the signal in the first place? I think this is the ultimate chicken vs egg question, but if we can extrapolate this sending/receiving relationship between us and the world around us, I think it’s worth considering what it is we’re able to encode within the intent of the message we are sending.
I believe we have control over the call we send out. And as individuals, until we learn to be intentional about this, we are stuck in a cycle of merely reacting to an external stimulus, a slave to how the stimulus makes us feel. But the addition of intent, of something actionable you can do to bring the world closer to your ideal — this positive shaping of the call we’re putting out —that’s what hope is.
Hope gives us purpose. It fuels action. It’s what drives us to, as Gandhi put it, “be the change you want to see in the world.”
Why Hope Matters
The world is made up of over 8 billion human-shaped fragments of the same consciousness. Each person experiences a uniquely absurd perspective, carrying their own struggles, dreams, joys, and disappointments. This is the human experience.
Every one of us has the capacity for true, adaptable, unshakable hope—the ability to find the good in whatever the moment brings and to share it with others.
Without hope, we drift. Without intention, we can forget that we can choose how to engage with the moment.
But the beauty of life is that we do have that choice. Our path isn’t dictated by some straight line from birth to death. It begins the moment we realize our own agency. And that realization can happen at any time.
The real test of hope comes in adversity. That’s because hope isn’t about controlling outcomes. Hope is the light that cuts through the ashes after the world has burned down. It allows us to see just enough to start rebuilding. In the darkest of times, the hope you carry inside may be the only hopeful thing you see around you. But the ability to hold that hope inside, and then having the agency to decide to take the necessary steps to bring it into the world - well, if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
We all know what hope feels like, but we’ve been conditioned to tie it to specific results—when in reality, hope is independent of outcomes. This isn’t to say that our feelings about the outcomes aren’t real or that they are irrelevant, but they are a response to something that has passed and not intent/action in and of themselves.
Real hope is not just a feeling. It’s the objective.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Have faith that moving with hopeful purpose with carry you to your goal. You are equipped with all of the life experience and lessons that have led you all the way to this point. Despite the struggles and the challenges, you have survived. Take a moment to recognize that this spark of hope will never die, because it’s not provided by the outside world, but rather comes from the same place your awareness resides.
