"What if there’s no hope?"

In the lighter times, when a clear and positive path forward is easy to see, we get lulled into believing that hope is an emotion—or that our permission to feel hope is tied to an outcome, that Vegas could put odds on whether hope wins the day.

But hope is not an emotion. It’s not reliant on an outcome.

We may believe that hope is a thought, a rational process that allows us to envision a brighter tomorrow. A mathematical solution leading to a better future—one we can reach through brilliance—and that once we’ve found this solution, we’ve arrived at hope.

But hope is not a thought. It’s not reliant on our ability to logically navigate to a desired outcome.

Perhaps, then, hope is a sensation we feel. Perhaps hope is an inkling, and if we listen to that inkling and do just as it says, we’ll be granted the happy result we’re desiring.

But hope is not a sensation, and it’s not governed by superstition.

Hope is a choice.

Hope is a decision based on a deep level of knowing—not in our head, heart, or body, but in our being—that we always have a choice in how to proceed. We can choose to do what is right and helpful, even if we don’t have thoughts, emotions, or a gut feeling that the outcome we want will necessarily follow.

Hope exists the moment we choose it. It’s not reliant on what outcome follows. The outcome is not the point.

Keeping the flame of our humanity alive, stoking it with hopeful choice after hopeful choice, is the point.

When the world, the country, or even just your life feels like it’s heading in the right direction, it’s easy to keep the flame alive, to choose hope, to believe that what you do matters—even in some small way.

It’s in the darker times that we discover if the sustaining flame of our humanity is strong enough to endure, when our illusions of hope as a pleasurable thought, feeling, or sensation disappear, and we realize that hope was never a thing of our personality. It doesn’t live on the surface of our ego. It has always been something deeper, beneath the armor of personality we wear that we are so afraid of removing because we fear that nothing will be left of us if we do.

Hope is below that. It’s deeper. It rises to the surface if we choose it. Hope is the soul-deep belief that no matter the circumstances, the dark thoughts we have, the heavy feelings we’re carrying, or the exhaustion in our body, there is still something left for us to choose. Something that cannot be taken from us—only surrendered through cynicism.

I'll admit to dark thoughts, a heavy heart, and a tired body lately. My thoughts revolve around concentration camps by other names, increased violence against women and minority groups, families torn apart by indiscriminate deportation, and neighbors reporting on neighbors. My heart is weighed down with grief, anxiety, and powerlessness. My body is exhausted from poor sleep, a persistent infection, and joint pain that makes typing difficult.

But I’m choosing to continue my daily practices that remind me of what I have in this present moment and my agency in deciding how I treat myself and others. I don’t feel positive about any near-future outcome, but I’m choosing hope.

Hope is not naivety. It’s not the belief that bad things won’t happen or that everyone will be okay. Never in the history of the world has everyone been okay, and never will it be. Naivety is ignorance and denial of reality. Hope’s strength lies in its clear-eyed acceptance of what is. It does not need reality’s blessing through positive circumstance to endure.

The opposite of choosing hope is choosing cynicism. Hope is a deep knowledge that your actions matter, even if only to your own humanity. Cynicism tells us our actions don’t matter, that nothing we do has significance, that we cannot influence ourselves or the world through our decisions, and that kindness will get us nothing.

Trump and his criminal oligarchs would love nothing more than to govern a cynical populace. Our cynicism works in their favor, every time. It’s the fuel of authoritarianism, and they encourage it by flooding our screens with information beyond any decent individual’s capacity to process. They keep us so off-balance that we may begin to believe that all our hopeful choices leading up to now did nothing but make us look like fools and imperil ourselves and others.

But it wasn’t our hopeful choices that created this situation—it was the cynicism in both ourselves and others. Had so many of us not chosen hope again and again, the situation would be worse. Much worse. And if we all choose cynicism, there will be no chance of it getting better.

You may not think of yourself as full of hope right now. If that’s the case, it’s because you’re still thinking of hope as a thought, emotion, or inkling. If you’re donating to causes or volunteering in your community, you’re choosing hope. If you’re checking in on your friends, you’re choosing hope. If you’re telling your friends you’re not doing well and asking for support, you’re still choosing hope. You’re taking actions that show your deep belief that something—not everything, but something—can be healed.

If you’re reading this post, you’re choosing hope.

I didn’t want to write this. I had no intention of it. At the end of a long day, when all I wanted was to take a scalding-hot shower and go to bed, phrases and full sentences began bubbling up. When I realized this was hope calling on me, urging me to write these words and share them—because they might heal something for someone—I cursed. A lot.

I didn’t feel like writing this. I hadn’t experienced a single one of those goddamn positive thoughts, feelings, or inklings all day. Not in a couple of days, actually. But, as evidenced here, I still had hope beneath it all. Fucking hope.

But I chose it. Beneath the patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing that we call personality, the belief that what I do matters—in a tiny way, but also in a cosmically significant way—remains untouched. It’s there, and I can choose it anytime I want, by wrapping a present for a friend, cracking a joke, or putting on John’s favorite music when he’s had a bad day.

You can choose it, too. Even if you’re not in the mood, even if your brain is spinning over catastrophes that seem inevitable, you can reject cynicism and remember that your decisions matter. They are the last thing that can be taken from you while you still live.

And you’re still alive as you read this, so hope is there for you to choose. Doing so will drive the authoritarians out of their minds.

Hope is rebellion.

If we don’t choose hope in the dark times, what’s the point of anything? And yet, we can’t truly give it up, can we? Once we stop waiting for hope to descend on us from the clouds and accept that it’s waiting for us to choose it, we see we’ve been choosing it all along. Hope is a choice that never truly abandons us.

Before long it may be the only good choice some of us have left. But it's a pretty damn good one.