Hope and its parts

Written at 2:07am, 4th June, 2025 | Bangalore, India

I have been very curious about where hope comes from. Especially in our human condition, where we are on the verge of losing our own voice to the noise of reels. Critical thought is already fading, and we are so out of touch with ourselves and the communities that matter. Where the idea of love and connection seems to have become an intellectual concept that can be written about in a million ways. But we struggle to find our own vocabulary to make it our own. And perhaps, to let it go from our minds to our hearts.

Where does hope come from here? What causes it? What creates it?

The more hope-core videos I see on the internet, the more something becomes clear about my own self. I have often found myself sobbing, just looking at incredibly human moments that I should have experienced in my everyday life. Kindness from strangers, love from close ones, gestures of being seen by a few we care about, and a world where I don’t have to perform to be accepted. Acceptance isn’t the thunder of claps or likes on my post, but a big yellow bulb slowly warming up and glowing in my chest. Something deeply personal, where the existence or validation from others doesn’t matter at all. And yet, perhaps, the algorithms push toward me what they know I don’t have, and as a result, I will latch onto it.

The roots of a plant, on a sun-parched surface, constantly find sources of water as deep and far as they possibly can. When humans are deprived of little joys, and happiness overall, it is packaged into events by the world and sold back to them, a vacation of a lifetime, a wedding ring, a proposal to remember, not for yourself, but for social media, where these deep personal moments become a show, which is then further packaged into aspiration. My mind seeking these moments in 30- or 90-second videos is such a strong reminder that I am no different than a plant looking for water. The drought I see around me is that of basic human needs and the basic human condition.

I write all of this, yet again, intellectualising an emotion. A deep-rooted need, to feel hope for whatever it is that I am seemingly missing. When I refer back to a note from 2020, "my loneliness comes from a deep disconnection from self".

No matter the people around me, I know that parts of me are struggling to find home within myself. And as a result, what my lizard brain understands is to reach out, instead of holding space for myself and just giving it room to breathe.

And so, here I am, back to the question, where does hope come from?

Perhaps hope is the sign from a spiritual being that there exists a possibility of a world that my human brain limits me from comprehending. After all, I am limited by my three-dimensional vision and model of the world. The best I can ever do is to translate my own condition into words. Nothing more. I can’t ever make you feel the depth, or help you imagine the vividness of parts of me.

But perhaps there is this higher being that knows and believes in a version of me that my everyday self is just unable to comprehend. Perhaps this is why my own image of myself is often so vastly different from the words others use to describe me. And maybe that is a good thing, because parts of me remain in check and don’t lose themselves to the ego. But also, all of these words, and yet, this exercise hasn’t yet told me where hope comes from.

Maybe what’s wrong here is the format in which I try to comprehend. Maybe it is not prose at all. The words and the linearity of it get in the way of this idea that refuses to follow, or rather, cannot be contained in the rules of English or the other languages I think in. Maybe that is where poetry steps in and gives it space to breathe.

Maybe hope comes from little crinkles in time, where the voice of someone who dearly loves me shows up in my mind, telling me there is more to life than my limited human imagination.

I have often heard the sounds of my friend Ravi’s voice, or my friend Emily’s. It is similar in that when I am in a negative spiral, the voice making me feel miserable is often the adopted voice of an adult from my childhood, a parent, maybe a teacher. So in some ways, hope is a spiral too, just going upwards, with the kindest voices in my head, so full of love, telling me not to calculate what cannot be bounded by the rules of the known, and to just lean into a world full of possibilities and unknowns. The only variable in that complex equation is faith in something more than my brain allows me to perceive.

It must be an act of the highest spirituality to believe the universe talks through you. And it does. Perhaps this is why I often can’t go back and relate to the words that seemingly flew from my fingers onto the page, and I have no memory of it. Perhaps the ether is where all this energy comes from, and where it returns. Where all of these ideas live, for me to absorb and accept and have faith in.

Times have changed, but my questions haven't :)

I started from hope and ended in faith.

Faith in the unknown of the universe. And the magic is not in knowing what exists, but in believing the right thing, person, or moment will show up when the time is right. And all I have to do is lean into my fear and whisper to it: I love you, I am here, and I am not leaving you.

Love,

Rishi