Hope

La Voz de Galicia – December 21, 2018 →

Cristina PatoWell, it’s already here. A year has passed, and we are in the Christmas season again. Each and every year, we make a series of resolutions that, though largely impossible to keep, give us the feeling that, at least, we are heading in the right direction: facing forward and hoping that all things to come will be somewhat desirable. Hope is the key.

According to the Royal Galician Academy, hope is the «feeling prompting the belief that something wished for may come true.» To me, hope allows us to keep on living, to keep on dreaming and thinking about the future. This is why this year, instead of having resolutions, I will have hope. Hope that our language won’t lose any more speakers, that Galician, a vernacular tongue, will be a vehicular—or working—language as well. Hope that equality will be not only a fashionable headline but a way of life worth working for. Hope that our thinking will not be carried away by the extreme politics spreading through the world. Hope that refugees may find a safe place, that there won’t be millions of people fleeing their homes to be able to survive. That the poverty rate will decrease. That we can find moments of happiness each day.

And though at times it is complicated to simply think about the future, these days in the year help one regenerate the capacity to dream so as to be able to hope that new heroines will appear who will be able to, as Castelao wrote, «transform wishes into reality, and ideas into actions.»

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