My Damn Opinion - I want to believe

At heart, I am an idealist.

This presents it's own problems, having to live in the real world all the time. Things are rarely as good as they could possibly be, good being entirely relative, and life being in constant flux as it is. But there was a time once, not too long ago, I had a lot of hope. A lot of certainty that things would be okay, that they would work out for the best, that the Gods really were watching out for us all and weren't going to let the whole thing come flying apart. Any of you who have read my LJ over the last few years probably have noticed that I have lost that hope, for the most part.

But I would really love to have hope again.

Kain once referred to hope as "that most cruel of all illusions." An astute observation, but Kain was an utter pessimist, and given the existence he endured that's understandable. But I have come to adopt that as my own philosophy lately, kicking hope aside whenever it dared to show it's face, and laughing at it when it proved unfounded. Kind of like kicking a puppy, I suppose. A puppy I myself feel wronged by, a puppy I once put all my faith in and who let me down horribly.

And yet it keeps coming back.

Because it's not hope's fault that bad things happen. It's not hope that causes the shit to rain down on your head. Perhaps....perhaps it's a lack of hope that causes it. I know for certain that we make the world with our thoughts, and that our focus determines our reality. I know for certain that many people, all working and thinking and focusing and hoping together can literally move mountains. I've watched it happen. But hope just doesn't seem like enough anymore.

Or is it?

I think hope represents potential. It represents the possibility that things can be different. That bad shit isn't going to happen all the time, that every cloud has a silver lining, that it can't rain all the time and the sun really is going to come out tomorrow. And potential is very, very powerful, I know that as well. That's something I can't explain in words, having held real potential in my hand and felt it's power shake me to the bone, rattling like a tiny explosion waiting to happen, but knowing when it does happen, all that potential energy shrinks to nearly nothing, because it has become something. But that's more metaphysical/philosophical than I want to get right now. Because I have to live in the real world. And in the real world, babies are murdered, people are horrifically abused by those they love, the government lies to your face, psychotic fiscal entities shape the very earth and train the people on it to propagate their continued existence at the cost of their souls, and I still have to pay the rent, whether I have it or not. So I'd better have it. There's no time for hope in the real world.

But it keeps coming back.

That spark of idealism won't go away. It won't be crushed. And I hear about new and spiffy ideas that would make the world a better place and I think, "How sad....it's going to buried forever." But I keep thinking about them. And I keep learning about the new ones. And I keep telling people when I hear about them. I guess my hope really won't go away. But my current problem is this:

Barack Obama is giving me hope.

I wish he would cut it the hell out. I wish he would start using the same nasty, filthy smear tactics as everyone else in his campaign, instead of trying to inspire people to act in the country's best interest or treating even the little people with respect. I wish he would stop being noble, I wish he would stop focusing on the real issues and just start slinging mud like everyone else, and I wish I didn't see that he has the potential to really change something. I know he can't change everything, that's silly. He really is only one person, and the president hasn't really run the country since they sold it off to the corporations 50-60 years ago. Bobcat Goldthwaite put it best: "Blaming the president for the way things are is like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger - he's not the guy in charge, he just has his picture on everything." The country is run by and for the benefit of big business, who has insinuated itself so firmly into the infrastructure of the country that at this point if we cut it out, we would die. They can do anything they want, and what they want to is make money. That's the crazy part - they're not even human. We can't just cut off someone's head and bring it all to an end. The hydra will just grow another head, and the monster lives on. From what I can see, there is no escaping it.

And yet here I am, having hope. Here I sit, thinking that maybe there is a way out of this mess, and while I don't know that he will create it, maybe he'll point us along the path. I don't think he'll make any miracles, but maybe he'll set a new example. I don't think he'll turn the world around, but maybe he'll remind us that we already know how to turn the world around. Maybe he'll bring some honor and dignity back to the office of president, instead of the colossal joke it's been as long as I can remember.

I don't know if I want to have hope. No, that's not true. I don't know if I dare to have hope. Because I can feel it, back there in the corner of my mind, that poor kicked puppy lurking in a shadowy corner, staring at me with those eyes, telling me that this time, it really will be okay, this time things will go right, you'll see, just hang in there. And I say to that puppy, even if I hope, there are so many things that can go wrong. So much that he can't control, so much that isn't going to change.

Can we really afford to have hope?

And that puppy looks up at me and says, Yes We Can.