Hope is a practice. It’s not a feeling that comes to you randomly the way rain does, when events just happen to go well. Every day, you have to spend a little time thinking about what good you want to help bring into the world and if you have the time and energy do a little thing to make that good thought real. Like going to the gym, or studying a new language. You need to practice to make it real.

If you don’t do this, you’re stuck with what powerful people want of you, thinking and feeling little else from what they direct you to think and feel. Pessimistic, only able to see a future that someone else is constructing and that only suits them and their own goals, not yours (and god help you if what they’re constructing actively wants to eliminate you and people like you). Optimistic only to the extent that you might get a little of what trickles down.

I heard a quote once that said “we are just the shit that rich people grow their money in” and I think there’s truth to it, but only if we accept that condition and do nothing against it. There is power in the raw assertion of “no”, simply refusing to accept whatever is being told to you is “just how it is”. You may not have the physical power or resources to change the conditions you’re in–very few of us do–but you have power over your own mind and thoughts, and you do not need to acquiesce and accept. That’s a choice you make for yourself.