Hope is a Fire

Hope is a fire, not a light bulb.

You can't flip hope on and off. There no circuit board, no fuse box. There are no shortcuts, hacks or workarounds.

Hope - like fire - requires heat, fuel, and oxygen.

The heat required for fire does not emerge passively. You rub two sticks together. You light a match. You bang flint. Likewise, two neurons can combine to form this thought: "Maybe life can change."

Fuel feeds the heat. Without fuel, the heat cannot be sustained, regardless of the amount of matches you light. Fuel comes from what you read, hear, or see. A woman falls in love. A stranger smiles at you. A book makes you think.

Oxygen comes from your environment. The right environment for the fire of hope is made of people. The wrong environment is empty of people. If you have heat for days and fuel stacked to the sun, bad people put the fire out. Living, loving humans keep hope alive.

As a reminder, it is much, much easier to keep a fire going than to start one.

Once you have it, protect it.