By Zyra Lentija
At 2 A.M., when the world finally quiets down and the noise fades, a question tends to surface, the kind people don’t usually say out loud: What am I still hoping for, and is it even reasonable to keep hoping at all?
It’s not a philosophical question at first; it’s personal. It comes after the message that never gets a reply; after being told “this isn’t going to work” by someone you thought would stay; after seeing a failing mark beside your name; after opening an email that begins with “We regret to inform you…” and realizing the project you gave your best to has been dismissed in a few sentences. Even smaller things accumulate: the wrong order after a long day, plans falling through, and the sting of being overlooked by someone you care about.
None of these moments is catastrophic on its own, but together, they begin to whisper something dangerous: maybe this is just how things are. And that is where hope becomes difficult. We live in a time saturated with information yet starved for assurance. Crises arrive faster than we can process them, leaving us feeling globally, socially, and personally uncertain. Yet despite all this, something in us resists surrendering entirely. Something stubborn remains: hope.
But hope is often misunderstood. It is not the same as optimism. Optimism says, “Things will probably turn out fine.” Hope is quieter and harder. It says, “Even if I cannot see how this works out, it is still worth moving forward.”
The philosopher Gabriel Marcel once described this as “creative fidelity,” a kind of faithfulness to meaning even when we cannot yet see it.[i] Hope, in this sense, is not passive. It is a commitment, a decision that the story is still worth participating in.
Theology deepens this. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, St. Pope John Paul II reflects on a hope that does not depend on circumstances, but on the conviction that meaning runs deeper than what we immediately see.[ii] It does not remove uncertainty; it gives us a way to live within it. Pope Francis, in one of his reflections, puts it in a disarmingly simple manner: Hope is “the virtue of a heart that does not close itself in darkness.”[iii] It keeps a person open, still wanting to trust, to act, and begin again. Even when the road is unclear, hope anchors us to the trust that a larger work is unfolding quietly within history, and within us.
If philosophy and theology give us the language for hope, life gives us its sharper edges.
A few years ago, while working on my licentiate in philosophy, I walked into what I thought would be a post-summer routine thesis consultation. A week earlier, I had sent my adviser the first two chapters of my draft. I knew they weren’t perfect, but I thought they were, at least, defensible.
He arrived with a printed copy. No small talk. No preamble. He started turning the pages. And then, line by line, page by page, he crossed them out. Not lightly. Not selectively. Entire sections, paragraphs, arguments cut through with thick, deliberate strokes. I sat there watching my entire summer of work disappear in silence, not even sure what expression I had on my face. When he reached the last page, he pushed the stack back toward me and said, matter-of-factly: “I know it’s hard. But you’re not really saying anything here. Read five more books, then write again.”
Five more books, on top of six subjects that semester. That moment could have gone in several directions. I could have argued. I could have shut down. Instead, I walked.
I wandered through centuries-old streets, letting the frustration settle into something quieter. Then I went back to the library, sat down, pulled the books he suggested, and started anew.
The second time was different. It was slower, more deliberate. It was less concerned with sounding right and more concerned with actually understanding. The reading changed the writing. The rewriting changed how I thought. What felt like rejection gradually began to feel like direction. In the end, I finished among the first in my cohort, not because I was faster, but because that same adviser was consistently there: demanding, precise, and unexpectedly generous with his time. The thesis received a high mark, but more than that, it opened a path I had not planned, drawing me toward the intersection of neuroscience and philosophy.
Looking back, nothing about that first draft was wasted. It wasn’t just the final word, which is, in a way, what hope looks like when it is no longer theoretical. It isn’t clarity nor confidence. It was the decision, quiet and almost stubborn, to try again when it would be easier not to.
In Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, hope is presented in a similar way, not as dramatic or triumphant, but as fragments of patience and persistence, in choices that seem small but are not. Most of life is lived there: in unfinished drafts, in uncertain outcomes, in moments where you cannot tell if you are moving forward or just beginning again. Yes, hope lives there. It lives there not as certainty, but as refusal. It lives as the refusal to believe that one rejection defines you; that one failure ends your story; that one moment of darkness cancels out every possibility of light.
There is more happening than we can measure. Hope feels fragile, but not because it is weak, but because it asks us to trust what we cannot yet confirm. Pope Francis leads us back to the truth: that we shouldn’t let hope be stolen from us. It’s a simple line, a simple reminder. However, it is one that feels heavier the longer you sit with it because the alternative is always within reach: you can stop; you can walk away; you can decide it is no longer worth the effort; you can let disappointment harden into something permanent; or you can get lost in it. Many people do.
But this leaves a question that is harder to ask and harder to ignore: When giving up finally feels justified, who do you become, and what future might you be walking away from without even realizing it?
End Notes
[i] Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1951), pp. 28-40.
[ii] Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), pp. 178-183.
[iii] Pope Francis, “General Audience on Christian Hope,” December 7, 2016 – October 11, 2017. Included here in remembrance of his first anniversary of passing last April 21, 2025, at 7:31 A.M. Rome Time.
References
Doerr, Anthony. All the Light We Cannot See. New York: Scribner, 2014.
Francis, Pope. “General Audience on Christian Hope.” December 7, 2016- October 11, 2017. The Holy See. http://www.vatican.va.
John Paul II, Pope. Crossing the Threshold of Hope. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Marcel, Gabriel. Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope. Trans. By Emma Craufurd. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1951.
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