Hope is Hard

I fear most people now misconstrue hope for patience.

They believe it to be a passive wishing process

That one must have without complaints.

And they are right that one must have hope,

As it is the belief that a better future is possible.

But hope is an active and disciplined process

And that is what makes it hard.

People don’t like hard.

I would much rather have the active hope

Than the more passive and performative patience.

Let me take it a step further.

My active hope involves more than just myself.

The better future I envision benefits more than just me.

And there is a cognitive dissonance involved with achieving said hope.

We can either change our behavior to actively work toward it

Or we can change our beliefs to shrink ourselves and avoid tension.

This discomfort avoidance is what makes patience an opiate.

It is easy to say the word wait and soothing to have others be changemakers,

While we flee from our own idea of a better world.

Because doing the work ourselves would be too hard.

So we make what seems to be small concessions.

These comfortable lies fuel the euphoria of comfort

As we use patience to flee from true hope.

The individuality of patience versus the community of hope.

I wish hope could be quick and easy.

But choosing patience is not a privilege I can afford.

I must choose hope instead, the path made longer,

The path made more arduous by the patience of others.

And yet, even with external forces making hope harder,

I choose it… because that is the world I want to live in.

So yes, hope is indeed hard, but…

Let’s do the hard thing.