Hope without hype

Hope in the marketing sense is loud. It asks for vision boards and morning affirmations and a certain kind of teeth. That version broke the first time someone I loved got sick.

There is a quieter hope that survived it.

The working definition

Hope is the willingness to keep breathing while the story rewrites itself. That is it. Not optimism. Not certainty. Not even belief that things will improve. Just the willingness to be here for the rewriting.

"Hope is quieter than we advertise. That is why we miss it."

If you can breathe and stay, you have hope. Everything else is bonus.