Vox Hunt: Hope for the Future

Show us a politician who gives you hope.

Anyone who gives me hope is most definitely not a politican.

Here are people who give me hope:

My children.

Other people's children.

People who have dignity and want to help others have it, too.

People who live in conditions we in the western world would never accept, yet go about their daily lives knowing they can love and be loved, give and receive, and that tomorrow is always a new beginning.

People who give themselves over to those in circumstances so miserable that tomorrow just feels like another nightmare waiting to happen.

The people who give you hope should be the people you surround yourself with each day.

You should be one of the people who gives others hope. I should be, too. Politicians will never give us anything but rhetoric, red tape, scandal, and expense.

Clean up your neighborhood, bring an old lady some homemade soup, donate your extra clothes to an overseas fund, use materials responsibly, smile at the people you run into on the street, and yes, go ahead and learn whatever you can about the people you elect into office, but remember that the only people you can really hold accountable for good behavior are the people in your own family.

Politicans aren't our good examples; we are. It starts right here in this spot, not far off in a legislative building.

Talk your walk and walk your talk. George Bush may be an utter buffoon, who makes people with the tiresome tendency to lump 300 million souls into one category think that we're all buffoons, but he has a super energy efficient house. Al Gore, the environmental guru, well, his house sucks energy like a convention of evil vampires. What you see isn't always what you know. Think for yourself, act for yourself and others, and don't depend on these people to fix the world you live in. After all, they're the ones largely responsible for screwing it up. That won't really change until people stop depending on a central power to make everything pretty and right and fair, and since that doesn't seem to be in the offing, well, no hope there. The government is a behemoth eating its own tail. It was put in place to serve us, but we end up serving it.

Enough. Here is real hope: the world is ancient, and the cycle of nature, despite our machinations and interference, continues on, unstoppable like the moon, waxing and waning in turn, and also like a pendulum, swinging to and fro in a pattern of time that we still don't fully understand. It's exciting and wonderful, really.  We get to decide how to make the most of it for ourselves and those around us.

Fully living in each moment is the most hopeful thing we can do. I challenge you to do this for yourself and those around you. The world could be a playground instead of a strip mine or a battlefield. Hope means believing it's still not too late. Sometimes truth is just that trite.