Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words And never stops at all.”

Hope is a funny thing. Call it a feeling, an emotion, or both, hope can be found everywhere. It is in the last biology paper you took, hoping to get an A, or maybe it’s in the room you decorated, hoping it’s going to be beautiful. It can be present in the smallest of things, on the brightest of days, the darkest of nights, but it’s there. 

Research shows that hope is a learnable, measurable skill, and one that has a sizable impact on students' success and persistence in school. So, we’ve established hope is an important aspect in a student, generally a person’s life. To have hope is to wish or be motivated to live the best version of your life in this vast universe. Hope is present everywhere, a statement I’ve repeated several times. 

Hope comes into its own when crisis looms, opening us to new creative possibilities. Professor of Psychology, Barbara Fredrickson argues that with great need of hope, comes an unusually wide range of ideas, as well as such positive emotions as happiness and joy, courage, and empowerment, drawn from four different areas of one's self: from a cognitive, psychological, social, or physical perspective. 

“Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained.”- President Snow, The Hunger Games. 

I would like to take one of my favourite apocalyptic series to delve upon this rather sometimes, the unspoken idea of hope. Compared to fear, hope is a weak human emotion. The Hunger Games reveals that hope can shine through even in an oppressed society. Hope breaks barriers through the people of Panem who signify the blessing hope can bring, the Mockingjay who brought different communities together, and Katniss Everdeen the spark of hope that started the rebellion. Countless books can give you hope, its postulates, its meanings, but that’s for you to research. For the Mockingjay, Peeta was her hope. 

I now come to my last statement, differing from my first statement, which was that Hope is a feeling, emotion, or both. Hope is a person. It doesn't matter who they are, what they do, hope is something that we, as human beings see in them. We may even idolize them, love them, help them, cherish them, and our time with them. 

So yes, Hope is a person. And if you haven’t found your hope in this world, maybe yours is in the world beyond. You just have to hope.