Your Choice: Hope or Hopelessness

The end of a year draws nigh. It is the time a decent man would stop his chores, put down his tools and take a breather, and ask himself, "How have I grown, and how have I not?"

Bah!

I scorn reflection. I scorn regret.

You reap what you sow. That is the rule, that is the law. No action is without consequences, and no man may escape them. Regret? What can regret do? Can it mitigate the consequences? Can it soften the impact? Can regretting that you did not do this or did not do that make the end any different? What can regret do, except plunge you into despair?

And reflection? What about it? Would reflecting on our past actions unmake our mistakes? The only purpose reflection serves is to stoke one's ego by reviewing, smugly, the scant successes that one has achieved.

I scorn all that.

The end of a year draws nigh. What of my hopes? Have I fufilled them?

Hope. What a word. In one syllable, it symbolises multiple facets of humanity's greatest strengths and paramount weaknesses. Where hope lingers, despair is granted no foothold. Against desperate, infinitely impossible odds, hope paves the way for miracle. Yet hope also drives a man to blindly fight for a lost cause. Yet hope also brings death and destruction to those that believe in it.

What of my hopes?

I could say I had no hopes. I could say, being the Vincent that I am, I avoided the pitfalls I saw. Yet that would be a rank lie. I'm human, and humans hope, no matter how foolish it may be. It is as undeniable as the turn of the tides.

Yet hope is as alien to us as the planet Pluto to Earth. We cannot understand it. We cannot grasp its concept. We just hope. And we hope. And we hope.

What is its purpose? Dare we speculate? Why do we hope? And what is its significance?

The end of a year draws nigh. Now is the time, to lay plans. To form resolutions. To review, reflect and regret. To forge out new blades of resolve in the fires of hope, for a better year, for a better me.

How can humans reconcile themselves to their rank ignorance?

"If evil truly exists, it exists in the heart of mankind."
-Edward D. Morrison

We are barbarians, creatures that fight for nothing but the sake of fighting. We fight to expel those people whom we do not understand. Whom we do not try to understand. We take up swords, take up guns, take up armies and nuke warheads, and slam them on those different from us. We refuse to understand them, we refuse to accept them, we refuse to try. Because we cannot.

Are we truly?

Where we tread, we bring terror and destruction. Yet, also, we bring hope.

Where animals are nearly extinct by our hands, we form enclaves and reserves for them, for the hope of their continued existence. Where sorrow and loss has abraded and worn thin the hope, we look for new sources, depleting them as well, but all for the sake of deflecting these sorrows and losses. Where hope does not exist, because we kill and slaughter and enslave, we create hope, and Jesus, and God.

Does hope cause death and destruction? Or is death and destruction the harbinger of hope?

Is there any difference, either way?

Are humans parasites?

Are these questions important?

No. I've come to the conclusion, they are not. Everything is in the past. The past is gone, forgotten, and history. We must now look to the future. That is where our destiny, our fate, our lives, and our deaths, lie.

Yet we face a cross-roads now. Do we trundle on, tired, exhausted, unwilling to lift our heads, panting at every step, discarding hope and destruction, and yet, hoping to outrun our own fears and evils? Or do we raise our heads high, embrace hope, and set forth with a spring in our steps, accepting hope with all its perils, and looking to carve a new path, away from the repetitive barbaric acts of humankind in the past?

Your choice: Hope or Hopelessness.

Is there even a choice? Will there even be a difference in the outcome?

Well, nobody knows. The future is yet unformed. We can ignore it, and move forward in time-proven steps to destruction, or we can reach out, jump for it, and risk breaking our necks in unmerciful agony.

Everything in life is a choice. What will you choose?

Looking to the future~
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