Don’t regret failures, what purpose does lingering serve? Living means success outweighs the failures. Being alive means that fact. If failure was most action’s result, we’d be dead.

And the world is still standing.

So: failures are not the end.

Hope is a beginning.

Perhaps you’d say hope is naïve? Not so in the slightest. Persistence is bravery, as is hopeful thought. The existential terror of existence, the void, that downward slide of guilt or pain—it drags people if they let it. Crawling away from it, running away from it, bothering to take another’s hand on that journey: how can that be anything but the act of a species capable of something grand?

Life can be a hardening agent, a snuffer of candle flames, a big weight on the frayed edges of a fighting spirit—it can feel like you are crushed beneath your own actions. Yet, we can fight for our own lives.

Yet we are capable of strength that has nothing to do with muscles.

The mother who also works a 9-5 job when mothering is already the hardest job she’s ever done.

The employee at a grocery store, on $5 until payday a week from now, yet still stops to have a friendly conversation with a customer and help them.

The hard-working tow truck driver, up for hours and hours, beaten down by life—yet still is kind enough to drive people back home. Still, still against it all, clearly takes pride in his work, in developing skills and doing his job well.

Never underestimate what people are capable of and can do. Just as humans seem able to do such immeasurable harm—they can do unfathomable kindness, day to day, moment to moment. People who have nothing still help people.

And you’re a person, too.

Meaning you’re capable of amazing things. And walls that seem too tight might just open an inch if fought hard enough.

If we allow ourselves to perceive ourselves as those with a candle able to be relit once more; if we see our own souls as a flame internal that could burn brightly and light the way for others; if we accept, against self-hatred, the dignity of being still worth igniting…well…

…it’s not hard to imagine.

It’s called hope.

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Special thanks to: Melissa Potter

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Want to read something longer by me? How about a whole novel! 

“Just Another Chosen One is a blisteringly paced, action-soaked debut from author Brandon Scott, sure to appeal to those who’ve gotten tired of reading the same old stories about the child of prophecy destined to save the world.”