Hope is not the belief that things will improve. Hope is the decision to act as though they might.
FOUND: Painted on the wall of the Hub amphitheater, refreshed every year on Founding Day AUTHOR: Attributed to Lucia Speranza, though four other contrade claim it for their own founders TRANSCRIBED BY: Every child in Speranza, at age seven, as part of the Remembering Curriculum — There is a word we use down here. Speranza. It means hope, in the old language — the language from before, from the surface, from the time when words were spoken under sky instead of stone. We keep the word because words are lightweight and carry well in the dark, and this one carries more than most. But we do not mean hope the way the surface meant it. The surface had a luxury we do not: the luxury of optimism. Optimism says: things will get better. Optimism looks at the sky and sees possibility, sees open horizon, sees a tomorrow that is wider than today. Optimism is beautiful. Optimism is for people who have not lost the sky. We do not have a sky. We have a ceiling. We have seven hundred people in a lim...
From the lore of Speranza.