When you blame a man for your woes, the weight on your shoulders remains the same. He may have put you into your current predicament, but he isn’t the one troubled here– you are. Words aren’t enough to drag these people down and time is a fickle mistress– so stop waiting.
If you have enough time to to revile these people, then you most certainly have enough time to claw your way out of this. A man’s obligation is to himself, one that you’ll fail until you realize this truth.
A person can only control what in within their means, yet some of us squander this. In the place of resolve, they show cowardice. I once thought hope represented a person’s naivety, yet I’ve been carrying this corpse on my back the entire time. It is better by far to carry this weight than to give up.
When we live, we win some moments and lose others– and that is acceptable. If I lose after burning my marrow, then it was a well fought one– a earned one. If I win after tearing my tendons, then surely it was a deserved one– its virtue being diligence. I may not be able to fight every battle, but I cannot bear regrets from a defeat I chose– nor can I step back.
If I lost by someone’s hand, then I may take a step back out of inertia, a force countering my gait. But if I surrender, I can’t break this momentum that I carry myself with, so my steps gain an angle. I can’t revisit this choice nor can I let it sit there, waiting for it to happen again. Instead, I’ll nudge my own future away from it while preserving the past.
Speaking of which, it’s time for me to rewrite hope entirely– to amend my prior words. Hope is a force that assumes positive outcomes, be it from people, places, actions, words, anything the human mind can put their trust in. Hope is also a form of trust, tethered by men and concepts– rousing many with the thoughts of one. You can’t hope without placing your trust in something, be it the Heavens, humanity or a fraction of it– a man.
In Move, I wrote that hope can’t sustain me. I saw hope as a beacon of naivety, a light that would block my line of sight– a lie. Yet it seems that I’ve already colored myself in this hue, forcing me to stare directly at the root of this contradiction– the present looking back at the past.
My previous words remain true. It’s one thing to correct oneself, but it is another to rewrite the past entirely. I meant to prune a single branch, but instead I tried to burn the entire tree. If people weathered by struggle can hope for a better life with uncertain fates, who am I to deny this hope? If the rich and powerful hope to preserve themselves while watching others languish under their acts, who am I to stop this hope of theirs?
Tell me, do they not have eyes? By the virtues of their positions in our society, naivety would’ve already sent them underground– six feet beneath. Thus, their hope cannot be written off as naivety. If my heart holds nothing, do I not hope whenever I close my eyes? Our humanity makes us unique, thus making our derivations unique.
But, your virtues and faults aren’t unique– your qualities are part of the greater whole that sets you apart from the tree we call humanity. For that reason, I cannot retract my words. Probability dictates that some of us shall be naive, so while some of us have our eyes open– there’ll always be a few of us walking blindly. People live differently, so we all hope– but not all hope is equal.
Author’s note: Not sure if I’m done with this, but I already got an idea on for my essay. Conflict is a choice and it seems that I have to put this one into writing. Apart from that, I plan on adding a few new sections to this once the college year starts moving.