The Choice: Hope as a Deliberate Act

There comes a moment
when the waiting breaks,
and the question isn’t Can I still hope?
but Will I choose to?

Hope, I’ve learned, isn’t something that descends like grace. It’s something you choose — sometimes with shaking hands, sometimes through tears, sometimes only because you can’t bear what it feels like not to.

For a long time, I thought hope would return on its own — that if I waited long enough, the light would come back. But it doesn’t always. Sometimes the light has to be struck by will alone.

Choosing hope isn’t naive. It isn’t pretending things are fine. It’s standing in the wreckage, seeing the truth of what is broken, and saying: I will still believe in the possibility of something else.

In existential philosophy, hope is often described as rebellion — a refusal to submit to despair. Albert Camus wrote that “in the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer” (Lyrical and Critical Essays, 1970). Hope, in his sense, is not optimism. It’s resistance.

Ancient thought echoes that same defiance. The Stoics taught that we can’t control what happens, only how we respond to it — that the act of maintaining inner composure in the face of chaos is itself an act of hope (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. 2002).

Hope is not about waiting for life to soften; it’s about continuing to create meaning even when the edges cut. It is the most human decision we can make — to participate in our own becoming, even when the outcome is unknown.

When I feel that flicker now, I feed it. I choose it, again and again. Because without hope, there is no choice — and without choice, there is no life.

Ritual Invitation

Stand near a window or outside if you can.
Whisper: “I choose to hope.”
Say it not as a demand but as a quiet truth.
Let the air meet your skin, the light — however dim — fall across your face.
Breathe it in as evidence: life is still happening, and so are you.

Your Turn

When have you chosen hope, not because it was easy, but because it was necessary?
What did that act of defiance look like in your life?
Share a few lines — your choice might remind someone else they still have one.

References
Camus, A. (1970). Lyrical and critical essays (P. Thody, Trans.). Vintage International.
Marcus Aurelius. (2002). Meditations (G. Long, Trans.). Dover Publications.