To ‘hope for the best’ is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It’s wanting a good outcome although you know it may not turn out that way.

We all need hope because to lose hope is to lose everything. Without hope, there is despair. Fear doesn’t build a future, hope does.

I find it hard to get John Lennon’s lyrics out of my head.

“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope you’ll join us someday, and the world will live as one.” Imagine that!

History is filled with people who held onto hope despite the odds.

Alexander Graham Bell was laughed at for his invention of the telephone as “a crank who says he can talk through a wire”.

Ludwig van Beethoven composed most of his music during the years of his steadily worsening deafness.

Abraham Lincoln failed in business twice and was defeated in elections nine times. One of the few times he did succeed, however, he became America’s 16th President and was responsible for bringing an end to slavery.

Helen Keller, blind and deaf at 19 months old, graduated from college with honours and became a world-renowned author and lecturer who said: “The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it.”

That’s Hope.

She also said: “It’s a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out.

“Yet I keep them because, in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

I heard Barack Obama encourage us with this insight. “Hope is something inside us which insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”

That is what I have discovered for myself. Hope does not arrive on a plate; it’s a conviction that there is a better outcome if I have the resilience to go after it.

So what is Hope, and how can we be agents of Hope?

Hope always looks for the best in people, including ourselves. Hope comes from within. Hope helps us to be grateful for what we have instead of grumbling about what we don’t have.

Hope lights candles instead of cursing the darkness.

Hope opens doors when despair closes them.

Hope accepts misfortune with courage.

These insights echo Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr.’s words: “History will record that the greatest tragedy of this era is not the strident clamour of bad people but the appalling silence of good people.”

We create Hope when we act justly and stand up for the underdog. We get hope and we give hope. Hope, like love, goes around and around.

Gandhi taught a different kind of hope. When he was 15, he stole a precious piece of gold from his brother.

He felt so bad about it that he confessed it to his father. He wrote out his sin on a piece of paper, sought forgiveness as well as an appropriate punishment. He promised never to steal again.

Gandhi took the note to his ill father and waited for the judgement. His father sat up in bed and read the note. As he read it, tears came to his eyes.

Instead of punishing him, his father hugged his son and that was the end of the matter.

Gandhi said the experience of being forgiven despite his wrongdoing, had a profound effect on him.

He said: “Only the person who has experienced undeserved forgiveness can know what hope is.”

Hope is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the certainty that things will make sense no matter how they turn out.

Hope empowers us to keep on doing good rather than succumbing to failure. It convinces us that life can be different and will be better.

As the Talmud reminds us: “He who risks little, risks much more”.

The great sign of hope for me in today’s world is that there is more honesty and less hypocrisy, particularly from the present generation.

Values have changed, as they always do, and mostly for the better. There is real freedom.

This young, educated and worldly-wise generation is able to reach mature decisions and make moral decisions different from their parents.

Yet, the real dangers are all around us. Unrestrained social media and the availability of addictive, mind-changing drugs could destroy us unless we face up to the perils of drug-taking.

My biggest fear is that this generation, with the opportunities they have to do good, might throw it all away by succumbing to addictions – especially drug addiction.

I mention this danger in the hope that we can step back from the precipice before it happens.

Another sign of hope for me is Pope Francis, even though byhis own admission, he is running out of options and energy.

He speaks and teaches respect for creation as does King Charles. They are prophets of a new age.

To have hope, we need a vision. “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” says Proverbs.

Hope is a spiritual choice; it is not just a random feeling.

We commit to hope, not as a naive wish, but as a positive choice, with our eyes wide open to the realities in our world.

If we are to prevent our own lives from falling apart in anger and disappointment, we must confront our denial and admit that the world we grew up in is gone forever.

Hope is based on the belief that it is possible to change. It is seeing the light despite being surrounded by darkness.

Hope is not pretending that troubles don’t exist; it’s realising that they won’t last forever.

It is said a person needs three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

Some 40 years ago Pierre Teilhard de Chardin predicted: “The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason to hope.”

That’s a powerful legacy and it is ours to give. Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.

The prayer of the martyr Oscar Romero is sometimes used to put hope and expectations in order.

Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw was asked to draft a prayer for Cardinal Dearden. The Cardinal got it to Bishop Romero, who quoted it in a famous sermon summing up his own attitudes.

“This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that will one day grow. We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise ... We may never see the results, but that is the difference between the builder and the worker.

“We are the workers, not the master builders, ministers not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

That’s Humility, and that’s Hope!