"Hope Equals Life" by Chan

Hope Equals Life A new year… a new beginning… a new hope…

What drives mankind to achieve success? What makes a man dream for a better future?

What holds one high even at the lowest times?

In the times that we live in, mankind has already seen countless progressions. So many inventions have been made for the betterment of our civilization. However, with progress comes conflict, and conflict really cannot be avoided. As it is human nature to agree and to disagree, we have a lot of problems all over the country, what with wars going on for years and other issues concerning politics, even economic ones. Not to mention the problems worldwide.

Currently there have been quite a few incidents involving planes and disappearances. To be precise, a couple of planes have gone missing the past year, and last December the most recent plane, the Airbus A320-200 of Air Asia Indonesia flight QZ8501, to disappear has just been found. There are no survivors. The other known plane missing is the MH370 of the Malaysian Airlines. It has still not been found for months now. And that is not all. There is the ISIS group that has been terrorizing the world, especially the United States of America, by killing innocent people and posting the videos on the Internet. The wars going on in the Middle East has never ceased, and even the Ebola virus is slowly dousing lives all around the globe.

Our country has its own problems to deal with. Aside from environmental issues, there is corruption in the government; the education system is a bit shaky due to the K-12 being implemented on secondary schools and below, unemployment is still a big issue, and most of all, poverty is quite prominent in our country. We’ve also had typhoons that devastated our country like typhoon Yolanda did to Tacloban.

Now these problems are not uncommon, be it local or worldwide, but these actually cause a big impact on the lives of those involved. Just think of the people whose loved ones are missing or, even, have departed from this world. Think of the victims of calamities, of terrorism, and the victims of unfortunate circumstances like poverty.How do they feel when these things happen to them? Devastated? Helpless? Hopeless?

Humans are usually strong because they don’t lose hope, no matter what life throws at them. But sometimes the circumstances in life become too much for them to handle. Like the wars that happen all over the world leaving victims scarred not only physically but psychologically as well. Sometimes they are hit by large waves of bad tidings that they, bit by bit, slowly lose the hope that they have.

But we as fellow humans can do something other than sympathize with these people. We can help them by giving them back the hope they lost, help them realize that there would be a brighter tomorrow, and give them the courage to hope for it. Actually, people all over the country, and all over the world, are already sharing hope to those who have lost it, one gesture at a time.

When our country was struck with the force of typhoon Yolanda years ago and Tacloban took the worst damage, people from different parts of the world gave the victims hope by reaching out a helping hand. They not only donated food, water and clothing, they also volunteered to actually go to Tacloban to help out. Whenever there is a typhoon and flood, we Filipinos help each other in an act of unity, or bayanihan, to get through the storm.We have numerous stories in the news showing actions of people committing wrongdoings, but we also have news of people doing acts of kindness that still give us hope that not everything is bad in

the world. Actually, there was a story featured on the television about a homeless man given some money by a known YouTuber. The Youtuber’s true intention was to expose the selfish goals of a penniless man who supposedly was to think of only himself by following the man after he was given the money and filming it the entire time, but instead the YouTuber was the one who was taught a lesson when the homeless man used the money to buy food for other unfortunate people. This alone is huge evidence that hope will not be lost from humanity… if we keep sharing itusing gestures of benevolence to fellow people.

Hope can refresh us with the strength to rise above the hardships and make us believe in ourselves once more. Like as Anne Frank had said, “Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.” And we can share hope by making these acts of kindness. Every day, when I read the news, there would be always stories of people committing heinous crimes, and it is truly saddening. Yet the news displaying the acts of humanity consoles me and reminds me that all is not lost. Humanity has not lost hope yet. Someone had once said, “The human spirit is strong. It seems to run forever on nothing but a morsel of hope. Without it, you have nothing. With it, nothing else matters.” That is true. Hope can fill us with such spirit that we can do anything, we can achieve anything. For if we have hope, we have the courage and determination to do it. All we have to do is to share it to the ones who have lost it.

It is quite simple, really. All it takes is one act of kindness, because as Aesop had said, “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is wasted.” This act of kindness will be the foundation on which hope is built upon. So let us bring hope back to the hopeless, and share hope, one loving gesture at a time.