Irrelevant Importance Life, art, politics, technology and the meaninglessness that matters to me.

Hope

Choronzon: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgement. I am the Dark at the End of Everything. The End of Universes, Gods, Worlds...
...of Everything.
Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?

Dream: I am Hope.

-The Sandman, issue 4, 'A Hope in Hell'
written by Neil Gaiman

---

I've been thinking a lot about hope lately, how completely insubstantial yet singularly important it is to our lives. It is nothing and it is everything, intangible and priceless. It is the light that keeps us going when life seems black as pitch, the drive to go just a little further, and then a little further after that. It's what makes us try when giving up seems so much easier. It cannot be sold and it cannot be bought. It is strength at your weakest, it cannot be stolen if you are not willing to give it up and it can only be destroyed if you let it be.

To completely give up hope is to lose all you have and be dead inside already, beyond salvation; breathing, warm and heart beating but not alive and never to be again.

In the darkest place, at the edge of the deepest abyss, when you're teetering at the brink, eyes burning and cursing all of existence and convinced that death would be easier, there still is room for hope. You have only fallen when you give that up. When it cannot get better, when there is no salvation left, when the last gossamer thread that could have pulled you back from that place slips from your grasp and the only thing left to do is take that last step and say goodbye to it all, then and only then have you truly lost all hope.

I've never been to these places, never sunk to that depth. I've felt hopeless, and sometimes I still do. I've had dark times in my life, and I will have more. I am so lost and scared and confused sometimes and I feel like things will never make sense in a way I can grasp. But I have never truly lost all hope. I am convinced that to do so must be the most horrific experience that one can endure, worse than whatever brought you there.

I have never lost all hope. I hope I never do.