Stories of hope

What keeps people going in the darkest of times? when asking this question people often say it’s the “light at the end of the tunnel”, that keeps people going. Hope is what keeps people going. so what does this tell us about what lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity?
before answering this question there are a few base things that need to be laid out. the first being, what is hope and where does it come from? We started this project by talking about four main terms. these being resilience, adversity, survival, and hope. through previous knowledge, reading texts, and debating in Socratic seminars I came to what I believe to be solid definitions of these terms and more importantly a way these all affect each other. A key point in this project for me was a video about how your resilience is like a seesaw where the fulcrum can change. this video stated that depending on your worldview and how you are raised and taught you will have a different level of resilience. This could also mean that sometimes you will have less hope. without one of these terms, you are really lacking in all of them (except adversity). How can we take this learning and point it to events in recent history or everyday life to better understand what helps people get through that “tunnel”?
And that brings me to the final product, a video. Due to not going on the field trip to Texas, I took a different approach to the events talked about in the videos, rather than choosing an event that has happened close to us I decided to talk about the Rwandan genocide. To help refine my answer and its connection to the Rwandan genocide I interviewed Elizabeth Mujawamariya Johnson. Elizabeth had lived through the Rwandan genocide and has watched Rwanda go from genocide to one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa. through my discussion with her, I came to the conclusion that the thing that held Rwanda together and helped it recover as quickly as it did was the power of community. And through looking at many other genocide you can see that this stands true no matter when or where it happened, for example, the Holocaust and Canadian residential schools. so what lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity? The lessons learned from stories of genocide are ones that display the power of community.