Why Even Bother to Have Hope

It is surely a sign of the chronically unprecedented times in which we find ourselves living that I’m willing to bet that you read the title of this essay as resignation. Why bother, period. Not why we might actually want to bother.

I don’t blame you.

I mean, look at the world around us. Just look at it. A total shambles, to put it politely. Other less-cheerful descriptions I’ve heard lately are: flaming dumpster fire, apocalypse and end days (though I suppose the last two are sort of the same thing).

I am sure, to an extent, that every generation has felt this way, to some extent, just as I know that every generation holds nostalgia for The Good Old Days, most of which probably never really happened the way we remember them.

But honestly? There are a lot of days in which I find it hard to feel hopeful for the future. My future. Our future. The way things are is not the world I thought I was here for. I really thought I was here for the part of human history in which our humanity showed the best of what we could be, not the worst of what we sometimes are. I thought I was here for the victory lap, not for the gritty and traumatizing revolution itself.

I’m not joking. This world is breaking my heart. It feels increasingly harder to find hope for tomorrow, and I’ve never felt despair for the future before.

I am tired of the news. It’s always something new, and yet, never anything new, all at the same time. I am shocked but never surprised anymore. A very small number of people (like, less than ten) own literally everything this planet grows for free, and it’s still not enough for them, so they try to destroy civilization with discord and war, and somehow come out even wealthier? 

I am disappointed. 

I am heartbroken. 

This isn’t the world I want. This is small, and selfish, and mean, and shortsighted, and terribly unimaginative. This is boring. There are so many better problems we could be solving and brighter futures we could be creating, but instead, we keep taking ten steps back on old steps we’ve already taken forward.

I’m tired of trying to do my part to make this world and this life better places to be, while forces much greater than my own actively seek to destroy the world in which we live. We are the only species, to the best of my knowledge, that so willingly and wilfully destroys its own habitat (which is every other living thing’s home, as well).

I don’t want to play the part I play in late-stage capitalism. I try to make the best choices I can, and even still, I know I contribute to the very problems I want to resolve. That’s a hard square to circle.

And that’s just The World. I’m not even talking about my personal world and life. The last six years have been the rockiest years of my life, and between you and me, that’s really saying something.

I’ve seen a lot of memes about 2026 being an auspicious year astrologically, at least for my sign, Leos. And let me tell you: I have never leaned harder into astrology than this year, because after adapting this meme to fit my own circumstances, I am willing to take some positivity wherever I can find it.

Please note: this is just my world. I didn’t even add political circuses, villainy in power, climate change, war and genocide, all of which weigh heavily on my heart and soul, too:

Oof. As you can see, in the past few years, it feels like I’ve been knocked down, knocked around and then, for good measure, kicked while I was down, sometimes by circumstance and chance, and sometimes by people I’d trusted. 

Now, historically, I’ve generally been known as an optimist. I’ve even been accused of being an idealist, which felt complimentary to me, though I’m pretty certain that’s not how it was intended in the moment. 

But, I will admit that I haven’t feel all that optimistic as of late. It’s just been too much for too many years. I’ve felt beaten down, and the flame of my hope has flickered a lot in winds that seem determined to put it out.

And look, I’ve had my fair share of tough knocks in my earlier life, but nothing’s ever been able to dim the light of the hope and faith I held for a brighter tomorrow. A shaman once told me that I didn’t come here to do anything, which I found mildly disappointing, until he continued that I came here to be something: to be light. To be joy. To remind us that light and joy and possibility are our birthright, and they are important. Despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I’ve never lost sight of what could be.

But these have been trying times for my CareBear heart. My clients will tell you that I like to say “fair” is a place to get cotton candy, but all of this? This has felt unfair. It’s felt downright personal, even though I don’t believe the Universe is personally out to get me (I can think of a few people who I imagine would be higher up the priority list if vindictiveness was the way the Universe worked).

My hope has been dimmed as of late. I’m not so much questioning my faith, though I haven’t been putting too much stock in it, either. It has felt like I, and we, are alone with these burdensome times.

Dealing with a fertility journey we never planned to take has been a real rollercoaster, and not the fun kind, though I suppose no one plans for a fertility journey. We are about to start the process of IVF. This is our third time trying to start, what with my mom dying when we were ready to begin, then being diagnosed with autoimmune diseases that made IVF and pregnancy unsafe. People have reflected that I don’t seem excited. 

And truthfully, I’m not. I am afraid to be excited. I’m reluctant to envision what could be possible, or really engage in my dreams and visions for my future. I hesitate to get my hopes up. I’m wary of going after goals and dreams, because enough big things haven’t been going my way and a lot of them have really, really hurt to lose.

It feels like my faith and hope have left me devastated by loss after loss after loss. I have felt physically and spiritually diminished, and without the resilience to get back up again and keep trying. I’m trying to move things forward, but I’ve been unwilling to let myself hope for the best-case scenario.

Strangely enough, I’m not depressed, or anxious, though I am sure it sounds like I am. Please rest assured that in many ways, I actually feel emotionally and psychologically more sound than ever in my life. I’m extremely well supported, with my coach, my therapist, my circle of friends and family. I am relatively more content than I’ve ever been in my life, which seems antithetical to what I’m saying here.

I’ve had to take time and space to grieve, and heal and recover from my losses. And if you know me, then you know that taking time and space are not my forté. The good news is that I have actually done these things, and I have recovered and I have healed, when historically, I’ve been more reliable to just ignore the symptoms and keep on pushing and driving and striving. 

These past couple of years, I am learning my medicine. I’m learning that my growth and transformation aren’t so much a change or metamorphosis into something new, as it is a revealing of more of who I already am, and always have been. I’m just learning to allow that, and not fight it trying to be something else, something other, something I think would be better.

To create that space, I took my foot off the gas in my business after my mom passed and I got sick. This means that my coaching practice has shrunk for the first time in fourteen years. This gave me the much-needed space for recovery, but now I find myself feeling daunted by the prospect of rebuilding. People I thought would be there aren’t, and that stings. I’m clear on my direction, but I haven’t walked that way before, so that path hasn’t been made yet.

It absolutely is time for reinvention, and my journey of the past several years has changed me, changed my focus and clarified my vision. And still, it’s always daunting to shift from the comfort of what was into the unknown of what is becoming. Possibility is exciting, but it is also scary.

This is the work I I do. This is what I support people with. I know all of this. But as is so often the case, as the one who helps others with this, I’ve felt very alone in navigating it on my own. As what has needed to come to a close has closed, this, too, is heartbreak and loss. This, too is a kind of grief, even if it’s what is needed to clear the way for what will come next.

So what is there for me to do? Well, I think it’s time for me to redefine hope. I think I’ve always thought of hope as this gentle, demure thing, tender and meek like a new shoot in spring. It’s a nice thing to have, but hope, like faith, light and joy were qualities I discounted and didn’t take seriously. They are frivolous and unassuming. I’ve taken them for granted, because they were always so automatically me.

What I’ve realized is that my hope, like my faith, my light and my joy, are some of the best parts of me. I’ve discounted them and considered them frivolous because that’s how I was holding myself. But I am not docile and demure and neither are my best qualities: I have climbed and crawled through hell and back for most of my life, and I’ve done all of that without losing my spark.

Hope isn’t meek. Hope is tough, resilient and determined to light up this world, no matter what darkness comes. Especially when darkness comes. Hope and joy aren’t nice to have; they’re essential. They scrabble through the cracks beside us, with scraped palms and knees, as we scratch through the darkness, seeking the light.

It’s easy to hold onto hope when life is going easy on us. It’s easy to keep the faith when your faith isn’t being tested. It’s easy to see the light when the days are bright.

But when the light is fading and every opportunity feels more like an obstacle, I come back to my original question: why even bother to have hope?

Here’s why: it is precisely times like these—darker, more challenging times—that hope and faith are made for. They are the keepers of the light, of our joy. And if we want to get through the tough times without losing the essence of who we are in the process, we’re going to have to choose hope over resignation, faith over cynicism, joy over despair.

So that’s precisely what I’m practicing. Choosing hope and remembering that hope isn’t fragile, and neither am I.