An honest story about my own struggle with hoplesness and the people who have inspired me to keep hoping

I woke up this morning and thought about the world in which I live and felt like I didn't want to live in it anymore. To me it seemed like no matter how hard I tried I will never be able to make things better. I just started writing about the people I have met. I was trying to express how little hope is left in this world and how many messed up people live in it trying to make it better, but always failing. However, as I wrote it all out I actually started to feel more hopeful.

I have met a lot of people in my time.

I have met punk kids trying to hide their brilliant minds under bright green Mohawks. I've talked to these kids and envied the bits of brilliance they shared with me, but they never gave the fullness of what they had to offer. I don't know why. I always did better than they did in school, even though I was ten times more stupid. Maybe I was just more willing to play into the hands of the system. Maybe they were right not to try so hard, I mean where are they now? Still surviving. Some of them have ok jobs. I'm about to graduate from the system and I have no plans. My hard work has brought me nothing.

All I escaped by not joining them were a few years in dark basements spent trying new drugs which I suppose I'm happy I missed but those years didn't kill them.

Although when it comes down to it, none of us have changed the world.

Whether you waste your brilliance on drugs or your work ethic on homework, in the end it doesn't matter because both are a waste.

Clearly the answer must be that neither of us have tried hard enough to make a difference. Homework and drugs are wastes of time but there has to be something that isn't.

There has to be right?

I'm not so sure.

I met this guy who opened up his house, his pool, and his fridge, to a whole bunch of youth he had gathered from all over the country. Starry eyed young people with love in our hearts and dreams of change in our heads. I was one of them. And I listened to this guy pour out his love for these ten little villages and I couldn't wait to go and make a difference. These villages were different in some ways. There was less diversity in plant life, more dust, the dogs and the children ran free, and houses looked a little different, but the people were the same as anywhere. There was bitterness, there was depression, there was hope, there was faith, there was anger, there was pain, and there was love.

There I worked with this guy who had devoted his life to political change and had a mind full of answers. We befriended our neighbour who was also from far away. Her life was a wandering path that didn't seem to be leading to anywhere special but man did she have a wide open heart. I met this little old man sitting next to his dying wife who had been there forever trying to bring hope to the people but the people were still the same as anywhere else. I loved this man's stamina, but what had he really done for the world?

I think that village is the reason why I'm not all for leaving. Because it seemed like no matter where we go and how hard we work to make things better we will still be left with the same bizarre mix of  bitterness, depression, hope, faith, anger, pain, and love.

That is what I see everywhere I go.

Another time, I lived in the house of an old man, who as best as I could piece together through broken translation had lost his wife and his faith, but not his love. He was bitter and his body was failing and he always seemed grumpy. If you asked him how it went he would answer "it goes" with a sigh (except not in English but in French). Yet when we had our big dinner time discussion about passions he said that his passion was for his friends and family and that he loved nothing better than to cook for and entertain and be there for the ones he loved. He talked and talked and I couldn't quite figure out what he was getting at but he pointed at these pictures on the walls of smiling little children and I could hear his pride and love.

I've met people with hopes and dreams and plans and ideas who think they have answers. Young people with degrees and relationships and experiences whose futures still have hopeful question marks.

I can't help but think that they aren't going to make a difference that the world will never get better that they shouldn't even try, but then I think about all of the other people I have met.

I have met a man who lived through utter hell in Africa and came to Canada as a refugee and I never even bothered to ask him for his whole story, selfish wretch that I am, but he still had love to give me and it was he who came when I was stuck in the woods because of my own stupidity and he cared enough to help me back. Beaten but still strong he was, with a heart that beamed like the sun.

I've met satisfied people with scars that still sting who can turn around and say that it is all ok, and I don't know how they do it.

I have met tired single mums or grandparents who had to be parents again with bags under their eyes and bitterness in their hearts, but some how or another they still got out of bed and dressed and fed themselves and their children and went on off to work. And it is a sad story but isn't it also a hopeful story? Especially when you look at their children and see that they are the future and they could still grow up happy because they are dressed and fed and someone's trying to love them even if that love comes from a tired and weary heart.

I've met people who lived on the streets for many years and did drugs till they were almost dead and then for no real reason except that there was nothing else to do they found themselves crying out to God and all of a sudden they are before me well fed and off drugs with jobs and lives and hope. And sometimes I look at them cynically and think, "What if God is a myth we tell ourselves to get by? What if all of it is lies: not just God but all the things that make people hope in a better tomorrow. What if there never will be a better tomorrow. Maybe we should all just give up and go back to bed and never get out and never try and never hope anymore. "

But what would be the point of that?

The thing that gives me hope is how much hope is out there.

All I need to do is to be courageous enough to believe, like all those people I have met, that there is something worth holding onto.

We may never make the world a better place, but at least we won't quit.