It’s difficult in times like these.

Ideals, dreams and cherished hope rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality.

It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideas, they seem so absurd and impractical.

Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death.

I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too.

I feel the suffering of millions

And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end

And that peace and tranquility will return once again.

-Anne Frank-

Holding on to hope when everything seems so bleak is a very hard thing to do. Especially with the world the way it is today, every new development always seems like more bad news. Catastrophes, war, disease, corruption and hatred run rampant. And yet I still hold out hope for a better tomorrow, I still believe that people still have the potential to be good, choose to care for another and turn things around. It is precisely when things seem so dark that believing in a brighter future is necessary, a hope that there’s light somewhere at the end of the tunnel. We each have to do our part to help humanity reach that light someday.