An orientation of the heart

To many, hope is ethereal, other worldly nonsense that gives the weak permission to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, a world where Darwinism rules and survival of the fittest is the only rule that makes sense. Hope is often dismissed as the sentiment behind cheap cliches and bumper stickers that give people room for pie-in-the-sky ideologies and farfetched schemes. To the careful discerner though, hope is anything but cliche-ish, anything but fluffy and insubstantial.

Hope is the gutsy, steely tenacity that gives one the strength to embrace the worst as if it were a passing breeze, the presence of mind to stare whatever evil it is they face eyeball to eyeball and be defiant enough to know they're not going down...not today!! Hope is anything but wishy-washy, airy-fairy, fluffy! Hope is to be credited for tyranical regimes overthrown, oppresive behaviours resisted, and for the flag of true justice flying no longer at half-mast.

In his moving work 'Not Deterred,' Paxus Calta-Star tells us about the 18 year-old student Polina, who no doubt compelled by hope, protested for a more just Bulgaria.27years in prison did not quell the hope-filled dreams of one Nelson Mandela to achieve democracy for a nation plagued with the disease of apartheid. To take it s step further, activist Vaclav Havel has said 'hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.