Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. 

Vlogbrothers turned 19 last week, meaning that vlogbrothers as a project is older than the iPhone or future AFC Wimbledon superstar Junior Nkeng. But one thing that's older than vlogbrothers is my marriage, which predates our making videos by about 7 months. 

Ok, so I recently received an email from a friend who's been going through absolute hell in their lives, and the email was about hope, which made me think back to when Sarah and I were engaged, which to be clear was not absolute hell. it was pretty lovely. So Sarah's parents wanted us to get married in a Catholic church, which we were happy to do, but part of getting married Catholic is going to a Catholic Engaged Encounter, which in my case took place in a nunnery in rural Alabama. It's basically a weekend where you learn how to be married, but with some Catholic stuff. I spent months dreading our Catholic Engaged Encounter. I was like, "Please do not make me go to a Catholic Engaged Encounter," but then in the end, I mean, parts of it were funny. Like, we were taught about how birth control isn't necessary and the rhythm method totally works by a couple who were currently pregnant with their fourth child. But much to my surprise, the vast majority of the Catholic Engaged Encounter was actually super helpful, and years, decades later, Sarah and I still use a lot of what we learned that weekend. Even the stuff I sorta disagreed with has stuck with me. Like, I remember the priest who led the whole affair saying over and over again, "Love is not a feeling. Love is a decision."

Now, to a sentimentalist like myself, that's a bit extreme. I mean, love is a feeling, and it's a nice feeling to be celebrated. But it is also true that feelings come and go in a way that decisions don't, and so, I would argue that love is both a feeling and a decision. And as a decision, it involves all sorts of sacrifices and compromises. And that's the other thing about love, right? Which is that like insofar as it's a decision, it's not an easy decision. Like it gets a reputation, as being easy, as being simple, as being sort of kittens and rainbows, but love is of course much more complicated and multitudinous than that, and so I would argue is hope.

Hope is similar to love in that they both have the reputation for being easy, but in fact they are quite demanding of us. And like love, I don't think hope is just like a feeling of encouragement or whatever. I think it's a decision. It's a practice. Like yes, there are varieties of hope that are relatively simple and easy, but for me at least, those varieties of hope don't like withstand the reality of human suffering. And so like, there's no point to them. For me, hope is a decision that one has to make over and over again to believe that one, the world and those within it matter. And two, there is caused to believe that things can get better for the world and those within it. And I know that hope is sometimes seen as an easy decision. Like, if you were a serious or hard-boiled person, you would embrace nihilism and reckon with a world where nothing and no one means anything. But in fact, I think that's the easy choice, right? Because, like, then nothing that you do matters. The kind of hope that can withstand the reality of human experience is much harder and more nuanced than mere nihilism. It's not easy to find a kind of hope that can withstand the reality that children die, that we are monstrous to one another, that we are capable of hurting each other in profound and lasting ways, but I think it's possible. I think it's possible to find a kind of hope, to decide upon a kind of hope, that can withstand that reality.

Also, just like practically, I think that hope is the correct call. Like I understand that hope is not always rewarded, but there is always the possibility of hope being rewarded. Also, there's the strange circular fact that when you decide upon a hopeful worldview, it actually makes it more likely that the hopeful stuff will come to pass. Like, if you believe that the world and people within it are worth saving, it becomes much more likely that we will reduce the number of children who die before the age of five, etc. Like if nothing and no one matters, what's the point of reducing child mortality at all? It's just lives that will go on to be miserable. And if nothing and no one matters, there's no point in writing books that try to console or encourage the reader because there is no consolation or encouragement. I do not think hope is only a feeling. I think it is also a decision, and I think it is a good decision to make. Now like any commitment, you don't make it once. You have to make it continuously which is why I think hope is and must be a practice.

Which brings me back to my friend who is going through hell. I don't know what to say to them. I mean the easy thing to say is that when you are going through hell keep going. That's an old line and there's some wisdom to it. But what I really think is that we have to decide on hope, especially when the feeling of hope is distant.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.