Maps

“I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.”

Whether or not you support politics, American or otherwise, no one can deny that President Barack Obama is one Helluva public speaker. What he says resonates in the minds of those who listens to him. While I love politics, Canadian or American and don’t always agree with Mr. Obama, I will always agree that the man has an amazing vision and a belief in something that may never happen in his lifetime or the next; a united America. He truly believes with all of his heart and soul that he and those who serve after him will make America a better place for his children.

Very few people have that hope. That absolute resolution that what they believe in is the right thing. That they know, truly know that what they believe in is right and absolute and whether it takes one day or one hundred years, that the thing that they believe in will come true. Even when everyone around you thinks that you are nuts, or in denial, the truly hopeful know and eventually, their resolve will come to fruition.

Sometimes, that hope is what propels us, guides us from day to day and through the snares and the fires and everything that life throws at us to destroy us. But the truly hopeful believe that the trials, the tribulations, the situations that seem hopeless always have a sliver of hope to them. For in that instant, something small will always appear and the truly hopeful know that those are not just things that happen, they are the things that fate will put in place to make the thing you believe in happen. Mr. Obama can now use his resume to win elections, but before that, he had hope that he could. For when you think about it, twenty years ago, a man like Obama would never have been considered the man Americans would want to lead. He was young, inexperienced and most of his ideas for a better nation read like a John Lennon song. But he believed and he had hope. That hope propeled him to make the choices required for him to achieve his desinty to lead.

Why do we listen to a man like President Obama? Maybe it’s because he is the most powerful man on the planet. Maybe it’s because he knows how to sell himself. Or, maybe, deep down, we all have that hope like Mr. Obama. That belief in a better world, in a better life. Maybe we all have something in our lives that we believe in when it seems all hope is lost and Mr. Obama reminds us that hope and belief are very real. Whether our dreams are making the world better, or simply a belief that everything will work out the way it should.

There’s always a reason to have hope, even if it seems hopeless, so whether you’re political or not, we should all thank Mr. Obama for reminding us that it’s okay to believe when there seems to be nothing to believe in and that somehow, some way, everything always turns out the way it should. For as the Ancient Greeks always said:

“Otan ola exoun xathi iparhi akoma elpida.”

(When all else is gone, there is still hope)