Hope & Rage Are Sisters
Don't let go of all your rage. You're gonna need it.
Welcome to A Rebellion of Care
Rage is rarely pure.
It is a cocktail of injury and idealism, shaken violently in the tumbler of circumstance. We rage because something has been broken—something sacred, or at least precious. A promise betrayed, a trust eroded, an injustice too glaring to ignore. Rage is the howl of the thwarted optimist, the idealist dragged through the muck of reality.
What we often overlook is that rage presupposes a vision of improvement, however obscured. An unspoken faith that the broken can be mended, that the wrong can be righted. Otherwise, why rage at all? Apathy, cold & indifferent, is the true sibling of hopelessness. Rage, by contrast, burns with the embers of possibility.
This is not to romanticize rage, mind you. It is an unruly guest, prone to smashing the furniture and overstaying its welcome. Left unchecked, it corrodes, turning its ire inward when no suitable target remains. But when tempered by reflection—when we allow ourselves to sit with our anger and sift through its ashes—we find that hope has been quietly forging tools for us while we burn. A plan. A resolve. A sense of what must come next.
Rage lights the fire, but hope builds the hearth.
The most tenacious hope is born in the fire of rage. It breeds the most potent force for change. It has shed its naivite, refined in fire, tempered by grief, and strengthened by the very forces that sought to extinguish it. The hope of those who rage because they care, who dream to fight despair, and who act because they believe that the world is still worth fighting for. So on that note…