A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from Questions Asked, chapter 14

Hope isn’t decoration on a hard life; it’s what carries the weight. Today’s discomfort doesn’t get lighter — it gets bearable, because a different circumstance is on its way and you intend to be there for it. With the tomorrow removed, the same discomfort has nothing holding it up.

Innocent learned this from the far side. Someone came into his life and hurt him so badly that he lost his way and became a danger to himself — “Self-destructive behavior is a sign of misguided passion” is a thing he knows from the inside. What pulled him back wasn’t the pain fading. It was a series of questions that turned his attention from the harm to the healing, and a future worth staying for: “The future I saw for myself motivated me to love myself.”

So how people treat themselves today is a fair reading of how much tomorrow they believe in. Where hope grows, the care follows.