We Hope, We Hope and We Hope.

At the Asia Pop Comic Con last week, there was a Star Wars booth where they basically interviewed Star Wars geeks like myself and asked a few questions. One of the questions that I had a ton of fun answering was, "What was it like watching Star Wars for the first time?"

Star Wars shirt from Forever 21 / black shorts from Gold Dot / infinity earrings from The Little Things She Needs

Allow me to geek out a lil…

Star Wars gave me my first taste of hope. Even before it was bestowed with the title "A New Hope", the first Star Wars movie was the epitome of it. And I don't mean that in the sense that Obi-Wan was Leia's only hope *cue Mandy Moore music* but in the sense that Luke was everybody's hope. Including mine.

I remember how intense that scene was where they try to blow up the Death Star by firing torpedoes into the thermal exhaust port. And like they all fly down this long Death Star trench and Rebel pilots are dying left and right, and Luke only has this one shot and my heart just kinda stops in the middle of it all and a few seconds feel like minutes and I hope so hard that it works. AND THEN IT DOES. And I feel like it does because I hoped that it would.

What did I know about how movies worked back then? How did I know that me hoping really hard it would happen actually had nothing to do with it happening? But I hoped. And I believed that my hope prevailed. And I've been hoping ever since. Thus the tattoo.

Hope is such a bitch, though. It's always there when you will it to be, even when it shouldn't be. We hope for things to look up. We hope for people to change. We hope for better jobs, better opportunities and a better life. We hope to forget our problems and our heartache as time goes by. We hope, we hope and we hope.

I used to cling onto hope with all of my being because I always believed in something better. No one wants to dwell on worst-case scenarios, after all. Unfortunately, hope is also what has turned be into this wide-eyed dork of an idealist who refuses to open her eyes to the truth: that everybody in this world is heartless and selfish and no one can truly love you and care for you but you.

Maybe people are all destined to be alone and die alone. After all, no matter how much love you have to give, the people you love the most will always choose to love someone else more - if not someone else, then at least themselves. Hope's a bitch.

Photos by Vincent Mabale.