“Where there’s life, there’s hope. Hope only disappears when you decide something is hopeless.”
- Daisaku Ikeda, Buddhist philosopher, Hope Is a Decision, p. 6
Hope is a decision, the most important one we can make. Many may view hope as blind optimism, but it is grounded in seeing reality as it is. We can always advance if we have hope.
Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela all maintained deep hope that was not influenced by what was happening around them – good or bad. Their hope was based on an unshakeable belief in humanity’s capacity for good. Even amid oppression and persecution, they refused to abandon hope in their fellow human beings. “Humanity is like an ocean,” said Gandhi, “if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty" (Gandhi: His Life Message for the World (1954), by Louis Fischer, p. 177). We can cultivate this type of hope, too. Fighting to make our belief in humanity the basis of our actions can transform a society that seems to be falling into darkness into one where all people are treated with respect.
