Barack Obama was elected President of the United States in 2008.  He ran on a message of Hope.  I actively volunteered on his campaign and I was touched by the message of Hope that he so eloquently articulated and ran on.  I was moved to write an essay about what Hope meant to me.  Here is my essay.

What is Hope?  Before I answer that, let us see what Hope has done for us.  Hope, a four letter word of the English lexicon, has been the clarion call that has shaped the political evolution of humanities from time immemorial. 

In 1905, when a 5 foot 2inch Indian barrister, practicing law in South Africa, was victimized by the laws of racial segregation and inequality perpetrated by the British colonialists, he realized that the same system was subjugating his own countrymen in his motherland.  He traveled back to India and gave hope to his countrymen to fight for a country free from the shame of subjugation and exploitation by their occupiers.  His people, who would call him Mahatma which means noble soul, rallied around his message of hope to free them from the shackles of oppression and the depravity of colonialism. 

A few decades later, a Baptist minister from Georgia, used again the message of hope to rally a nation to see the inequities and ugliness of racial segregation.  He shared with the nation his dream and hope for a day, when a person would be judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.  A nation, founded on the principles of equality and liberty, and only too eager to recoil from the blot on its collective psyche, rallied again to the message of hope and passed landmark civil rights laws to restate its belief of equality of all its citizens.

And then recently, a man who was imprisoned for 24 years in his native land of South Africa, used his message of hope to bring his captors to their knees and disband an oppressive regime of Apartheid.  His message of hope not only rung loud with his fellow countrymen, but across all of humanity.  Nations across the world shunned the government of his captors and crippled their ability to continue their barbarity.

So what is so powerful about Hope that it can move humanities, an entire nation and sometimes the entire world?  All human beings at their core are romanticists and dreamers.  They aspire for circumstances and opportunities beyond what they endure or enjoy as the circumstance may be.  And Hope is that innate spirit in every human being that makes them work for a better tomorrow. 

Hope is not limited to just political aspirations.  Hope plays a role in our every day life as well.  A single mother, on a shoe string budget, when she struggles to feed her children, or to house them or to educate them, finds the energy to keep going only because she hopes for a better future for her children.  Hope of a disease free life is what gives strength to a cancer patient to withstand the ravages of radiation treatment or chemo therapy.  Hope in our scientists ability to use stem cell technology to find cures for genetic disorders, is what encourages a mother to carry a fetus to term even with the knowledge that the child could be severely autistic. 

And hope plays a role, when a community reeling with the effects of drugs and violence, comes together and fights for reclaiming their streets and neighborhoods, and makes it a safe environment for raising their next generation.  A nation, when it reels under the effects of lost jobs, lowering wages, disappearing factories, finds its resilience in the hope that this time will pass and a better day will emerge. 

And it was again that message of hope that we saw played out right in front of our eyes these last eighteen months.  When an unknown senator from the State of Illinois, pointed out that we don’t have to invade a country that did not attack us for us to feel safe;  that we don’t have to be suspicious of each other to the extend that we have to wire tap our own citizens to feel safe; that we don’t have to suspend some of the fundamental essence of our constitution to feel safe; that we don’t have to forgo the decency of our humanity and our abhorrence to torture to feel safe; that we don’t have to be scared into a constant state of fear to feel safe.  That thoughtful senator instead challenged us to have the audacity to hope for the promised land that the preacher said we could have, the promised land where the decision to spill American blood will not be made callously; the promised land where the constitution will be held sacred again; the promised land where all children will have a shot at the American dream through access to education; the promised land where all its citizens can have comfort in the knowledge that medical care is accessible and affordable; the promised land where we know that we will leave behind a planet that is better than the one we inherited.

It was the promise of hope that moved the nation to elect that man, whose ancestors had survived the gallows of ships of slavery, to the White House and declare to the world “Yes, We Can”.

So hope is a four letter word, but I don’t cringe when I hear it, but a smile creases my face.