Hope. I thought I left that shit back in high school. Back when a black man was president of what seemed like an intact country and I had both a religion and a car. Now, none of that is true, and one look at the headlines is enough to make you think it’s all downhill from here. And yet, I find myself being more hopeful than ever.

On one hand, it’s because I understand all that is hopeless. I understand why someone would have voted for Donald Trump — even if he, a grown man of wealth and privilege, makes fun of disabled people and objectifies and preys on women. I understand that the rage and frustration that launched him into the White House was a product, an inevitability, of decades of ignorant and inefficient domestic and foreign policy. Trump, like any good con artist, took advantage of people and, like too many other politicians, has done less to help them and much more to enrich his inner circle.

On the other hand, there are many reasons to be hopeful for this new decade. Policies and ideas that would bring justice to people of all statuses are being thrust into the national conversation: a broad Green New Deal to adapt to climate change, healthcare and a university education available for all, the legalization of marijuana and criminal justice reform, a reckoning with the student debt bubble, and an update to our immigration system. Contrary to popular belief, these ideas are not swords pointed at the wealthy nor are they idealistic money pits. These are discussions that our country should have had years ago — a simple reallocation of resources in some cases — and they have been held back by a combination of capitalism, corporate hegemony, and cowardice.

But as I’m feeling more hopeful, I’m sensing from people such strong doubt and hopelessness that these ideas could ever shift from potential to practice. The “electability” headlines are hopelessness masquerading as pragmatism. The fear of changing the status quo, and of simple words like “radical” and “extreme”, is hopelessness pretending to be conservatism. The knee-jerk of “How are we gonna pay for it?” is hopelessness trying to sound financially responsible. And to doubt justice is even attainable is to be hopeless probably beyond repair.

I’m not advocating for optimism here. I know how sad our state of affairs has become. I am advocating for hope. Hope in justice. The difference between the two is that optimism is too close to naivete, while hope is positioned alongside potential. To be optimistic now is to return to the moments just before the election of Donald Trump. To be hopeful is to reckon with the long road of mistakes that brought us here and to defiantly proclaim, “We can still do much better.” Because we can.

Obviously justice requires more than just hope, but this simple first step is so often blocked by pessimism, fear, and anger. These obstacles come from our environment but are also placed ourselves before our own feet. We are convinced and convince ourselves that the main priority is winning, financial security, or moderation. Without hope, a clear and long-term standard of justice cannot be created to which we can compare our words and actions.

I had an experience recently that helps to demonstrate my viewpoint.

I was playing the online shooter game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and I was queued into a game with a team of three other players. Almost immediately, one of the three players started making fun of me, first using a derogatory term upon hearing my voice and then adding labels to me like “libtard” because I said I was from New York. When he asked what my political views were, I said, “On what?” “Everything,” he responded. When I said I don’t have enough time for that self-analysis (I’m trying to loot!), he pressed me and made me choose a candidate I would vote for if the election had to be done at that moment. Fine, Bernie Sanders.

In retrospect, I know that just the enunciation of those two words opened a cavity in this man where he stored quite a lot of rage and frustration. The “Bernie Bro” labels were immediate and he proceeded to team kill me with a shotgun. Once another teammate said something to the effect of “He usually does this sort of stuff,” I understood the group dynamic a bit more. This rage-filled Japanese-American dual citizen dude who sounded not much older than me clearly had no better outlet for his political frustrations than to kill and mock anyone who didn’t agree with him on a video game.

I was mostly laughing and taking things lightly, and when he killed me I couldn’t help but crack up both at the ineffectiveness of his rage but also at the experience as a whole. I rarely interacted this much with online provocateurs and it was a bit confusing, so I also laughed while figuring out what to say. I decided to stay in the match and spectate my teammates, and was met with “Well since you’re sticking around, let’s talk.”

The following discussion was one where I played defense against a level of hopelessness and rage that I had rarely experienced firsthand (or whatever hand is in between face-to-face and online chat interactions). The thing is, I agreed with many of his frustrations and doubts that the government can be an arbiter of justice. But to his ultimate conclusion I would never concede. He would continuously circle back to “the free market” being the only system that could create justice and that “government doesn’t do any good for anybody.”

I won’t present here all of the arguments I gave in favor of government, but I want to reiterate that optimism and hope do not necessarily go hand in hand. Even though I agreed with many of the points he raised about the government, I kept returning to the hope I conserve for my fellow humans and therefore for their organization in governments, partly because I have no choice; their betterment is always linked to mine.

Though I walked away from that conversation with another, specific type of hope: the hope for dialogue. It became clearer after that conversation just how poor we are at discussing political issues, especially online where voices of authenticity and frustration are reduced to text. But his willingness, his fervor, to discuss these issues with me betrayed his viewpoint that the government is all hopeless. To be desperate to share your views about government is to have at least some hope in its potential.

He was a pessimistic person no doubt, but a glimmer of hope shined in him yet. And if I hadn’t had the patience to step beyond the display of anger, I never would have seen it.

This I’ll hold onto, even if the orange menace gets reelected. Even as ideas to achieve long-deserved justice are wrongly branded as extreme and even as short-sighted questions of electability wrongly overshadow the standard of competence. People give themselves, and are being constantly fed, too much pessimism and reasons to despair.

I’ll always hold onto hope — in dialogue and in human potential — so long as people continue to be so emotional about things. Built into our frustrations is an expectation: this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. As long as we are frustrated or scared about the current state of affairs, we give off the slightest hint of expectation that justice can be achieved.

Since its birth, our country has demonstrated incapability and ruthlessness, as we generate unimaginable wealth on the backs of the disadvantaged all over the world. Combine that with the internet, which is flooded with negativity and controversy of all kinds: real, exaggerated, and fake. One could easily find many more reasons not to be optimistic about the future. But at minimum, one must be hopeful if any good change is to come of it. Hope is what gets you to try, to attempt a shot at the goal, even if you think it might not end well. Hope keeps the door to justice slightly ajar, even if this time around there isn’t the strength to get everyone through.