"Never Losing Hope" - A Deeper Side of Nouns
In Ms. ByBee’s AP English class, we were told to write an essay on an abstract noun. An abstract noun is a noun denoting an idea, quality, or state rather than a concrete object. At first I had no idea what noun to choose, so I had to look up a list of them to get my brain juices flowing. Words like happiness, courage, fear, and love popped up. To make my decision I had to think of a word, or a feeling rather, that influences my daily life. The word I finally landed on was hope (which I now realize I took longer choosing a word to write about than the actual writing portion!).
Everyday I wake up I “hope” it’s going to be a good day. I “hope” my hair cooperates with me; I “hope” my outfit is on point; and I especially “hope” all of my teachers are in a good mood. The dictionary definition of hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen”, but I had to think beyond that, which wasn’t easy. I thought about not only everyday scenarios, but cultural scenarios as well; my view on the "simple" noun changed taking all of this in account, and here is how I now define the word hope:
In different countries, different cultures, different homes, and when meeting different people, you are going to hear varying definitions of the word “hope”. Experiences in people’s lives are what shape this word’s meaning, however, a true definition does not exist. Hope is a very powerful concept that inspires many lives daily; it is wanting something so bad that you start believing it’s going to happen, and it is not being discouraged when it doesn’t work out entirely the way you planned. It is putting trust into a situation that you can’t fully control. Author John Green states,“We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.” Green means that no matter how hard something gets, every wound heals if you don’t lose hope. Hope is that gut feeling you get when you’re watching your favorite team getting ready for the game winning play when the score is tied against their biggest rival and believing the end is going to turn out in your favor. Hope is the thirty seconds before you open the Christmas gift you’re holding in your hands and expecting the present you’ve been begging for since summer to be underneath that red and green wrapping paper. Hope is noticing someone who made you look twice and wanting them to notice you back. It isn’t just praying, it’s believing.
I realized that hope, for me, came in many different forms. It came for me at a very young age when I saw my mom lying in her hospital bed for four months, beautifully pale, and still believed she was going to make it through. When the cancer took her way too soon, it became believing in something more powerful than I could imagine, and that she was finally pain free. Hope is my aspirations of becoming a successful entrepreneur some day. Hope is every goal I’ve set for myself that I’m determined to meet no matter the circumstances. It’s a chance when I make a mistake to start over without judgement or fault. Hope is my optimism for the world and my generation. It’s my beliefs that in the end everything is going to work out how it should.
John Green was right, no amount of suffering lasts forever if you just stay hopeful. I truly do believe that staying hopeful makes a world of difference. Keeping an optimistic attitude throughout high school will lead you to success because if you expect your dreams to come true with confidence, it will push you harder to achieve your goals. With a schedule packed full of honors classes, a job, and contributing to this year’s awesome yearbook, I can only hope that it all pays off in the end (and that I can get to bed at a decent time!).
