Chapter 46: Hope-Questing

Is hope really a thing with feathers?

26 October 2025

We hear a lot about hope right now: don’t give it up, hang onto it, try to find some. You know how it goes.

Given our current wtf-even-is-this timeline, I’ve been thinking about the hope angle rather a lot. I hoped we wouldn’t end up here, even when it was impossible not to see where we were headed. I hoped I was wrong (I wasn’t). I hoped we would all learn to make better choices. Lately I find myself hoping for more dramatic, theatrical, Book of Revelations kinds of things, until I remember that such thinking is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. There is no magic Roomba to come in and suck up the disaster we’ve created. Like it or not, this is our mess, and we need to clean it up.

So where does hope come into it, then?

For me, it comes down to this: Gandalf was right. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” We can dig in and find some hope to keep going. Hope that the sun will come up again tomorrow. Hope that the little tomato seed you planted will sprout. Hope that the allergy meds you took last night will keep working as you go through your day. Everything we do is based to some degree on hope, on a vision of a kinder, gentler future. Hope comes from caring, from compassion, from love for ourselves, for those we share the planet with, and for the planet herself.

Finding and nurturing hope is what lets us take action. Hope moves us to get to work to try to leave the world a better, fairer, safer place than we found it.

Some days are hopey-er than others. Some days you need to shake things up. Other days, you need to regenerate, recalibrate, hope-quest and ohhmmm. It all counts.

Hope is a choice.

So just for today, choose one thing to hope for, one little corner of the universe that you can love a little bit. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Low drama and below the radar is good. Do hopeful, kind, loving things because they are hopeful, kind, and loving. That’s all the reason you need. Keep it simple unless you feel like being complicated. Even if the only thing you do today is scoop the cat litter, you’re still making the world a nicer place to live for you and the cat.

Nobody really likes scooping cat litter, but it needs to be done, and it keeps the cat happy, which keeps you happy, eh?

Most hope-based tasks are tasks nobody wants. That’s why hope is needed. This world-wide cleanup and reboot is a job nobody really wants. But we are here, now, for however long or short our lives last. We have a choice. I hope, and I hope you choose hope so we can combine and leverage our hope to lift and lighten the load for everyone.

Maybe hope really does have feathers…or maybe it rides in on eagles’ wings.

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Thanks so much for joining me here! Your presence makes all the difference; it means I’m not alone and neither are you.

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