Hope

By Michael Dao

I believe in hope. Hoping will help me to have a happier life. Every single time people want to succeed in something, the first thing comes to their mind is hope. Hoping that everything will be fine when they start their business is the most familiar feeling of humans. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “Hope, in its widest acceptation, is described as the desire of something together with the expectation of obtaining it.” Every one has desires to achieve something in his or her life. If he or she does not desire to do things, it is hard for them to become a successful person. Everything needs hope. People always start to do things whenever they see there is hope in them. So hope is always with me. When I hope for something, it gives me strength to wait and keep on going.

Hope is the most important thing in my life. Since I was old enough to live my own life, I have known how things work out. With me, hope is equal to wait. But hope is more optimistic because when I hope for things, I know what I am waiting for and whether I have the chance to succeed or not. Honestly, I am not an optimistic person. I always experience disaster because everything usually turns out to be really bad. For a long time, I did give up on waiting because I thought that it was useless for me. At that time, I thought life did not like me very much. I failed in everything I wanted to. My life was really terrible.

Two years ago, I came to Lowell Catholic High School in Massachusetts. Theology is the required subject in a Catholic school so I had to take Theology for two years. At the beginning, I thought that I would not understand anything because I was Buddhist. And I felt like an alien from another planet when I attended this class. I did not get anything even though it was simple. However, I started to understand when my teacher started to talk about contemplation and hope. We prayed every morning before and after class. I was quiet in the beginning because of the prayer. My classmates started to talk about everything in life and the most impressive lesson was the role of hope in human life. After that, I began to hope and pray for things I wanted. Time has passed and hoping is one of my habits now. It changes my life a lot. Now, I hope for everything that happens in my life even love, friendship, and my family.

Life will turn out good if we always have hope. Bad and good things will come to people’s life. Also, there will be a time when people have to struggle with their feelings such as failure, sadness, and loneliness… there is nothing for people to do in those kinds of situations except hope for good things to come. People use to say “there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.” Hope is the guide of human life. Without hope, I would not be who I am today. Maybe I still would be living a terrible life like before, if I had not learned how to hope.