Layz

Is it human nature to crave or foresee happy endings? Today morning was spent like many of those that follow my hollow, sleepless nights. Smoking a cigarette out my window with an ice cold cup of water. Although I always praise my intuition, these days I've been doubting myself. Before me is a perfectly fine view: two story homes built by underpaid workers, surrounded by luscious green trees. Will green become an artificial color soon? Is this mundane, dull moment one I need to savor? Maybe it's because the hot temperatures haven't peaked yet today, or maybe it's because I've become so used to the manmade hell that 40 degrees Celsius is, but it wasn't that hot today. While turning to my usually heavy heart, it was quite hopeful. Hopeful. Hope — what a strange concept. A couple years ago while doing a school assignment I researched about a human's "negativity bias". Evolutionarily, humans learned to favor the worst case scenario. Think: if you could eat an apple which has a 20% chance of killing you painfully and an 80% chance of leaving you perfectly alive and unharmed, your human brain has been wired to automatically assume that you would be unlucky enough to fall into the 20%. In a world where the lower class is often - if not always - deceived, it is not far fetched to say that hope might be a modern man-made concept that has been advertised to us as the inevitable truth. Movies, novels, legends, religions, all talking about a "happily ever after" that is yet to be achieved after hundreds of years. For the upper class, the future is built on money and playing your (credit) cards right. For the rest, the future is built on hopes and dreams. Of course in an ideal world, there would be no bombs or weapons. Rather, those would be destroyed. Maybe hope would exist then. As long as the super-wealthy keep gnawing at every exploit-able crumb this universe has to offer, hope has no right to reside in me. Perhaps what takes its place is rage.