Here are two hopeful paragraphs from an essay about uncertainty inspiring hope by Howard Zinn in a inspiring collection of essays by social activist Paul Rogat Loeb titled, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: a citizen’s guide to hope in a time of fear.
Is an optimist necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our
time? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that only
confidence can prevent people from giving up the game before all the cards
have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to
foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a
possibility of changing the world.
…
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact
that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion,
sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex
history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our
capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there
are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the
energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spiraling top of a world
in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't
have to wait for some grand utopias future. The future is an infinite succession
of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance
of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
~Daisy