Hope Failed

Adrian walked down the street. Hands in his pockets and head down. The wind was strong today but his thick hooded sweatshirt kept it out of his ears. Not that it mattered he could hear an ant crossing a sidewalk from ten blocks away. He passed many homeless people on his trek. Adrian saw people shooting up in a back alley he passed. He witnessed a man with a gun come running out of a local business. He heard a murder with an axe happen a few blocks away. He heard everything. He saw everything. Adrian could smell blood all over the city.

 Adrian knew all. He shook his head in silence as a single tear rolled down his cheek. Adrian was depressed. Adrian was overwhelmed.

His walk took him around fifteen minutes and upon arriving at his favorite sandwich shop he smiled with half his mouth. This place made him a little happy, but nothing could soothe his heart.

 He entered the shop and the smells of fresh baked bread mingling with assorted meats and cheeses filled his nostrils. The smells brought back memories of so many things he had witnessed coming here countless times. His heart was heavy with all the things he knew. He approached the counter trying not to cry and ordered his favorite.

“A Reuben please,” Adrian spoke softly.

“Will you ever try something else,” the young lady behind the counter asked him.

Adrian was silent as he counted out the price that was always the same. He left a twenty dollar tip as always. He took his sandwich and went to the same table as always and sadly consumed his lunch. A few tears came as his thoughts consumed him. He thought of his sights and sounds from his walk and he almost broke down sobbing. He thought of the government officials that thought the country was becoming great again. He wondered who it was great for. Only the wealthy had great lives but they did not live in the same world. He thought of factory workers breaking their bodies down to provide food and shelter for their families. He thought of the fast food workers constantly being called stupid simply because they made a mistake. The doctors and nurses that worked crazy hours to care for ungrateful patients. Adrian was consumed with sadness. His throat was tight with anguish but he managed to choke down the tasteless sandwich. He wadded up the wrapper and sat still for a moment letting the sadness lower into the pit of his stomach like a rock. He gathered his wits. Once his trash was disposed of he rose from his seat and began his usual trek around his neighborhood as always.

Adrian walked his same path everyday. He observed the same crimes and tragedies as always. Nothing ever changed. He thought to himself about the things he could do. Adrian could heal with a word. He could kill with a touch. He knew what stocks to buy and could make homeless people millionaires overnight. Adrian knew all and could do all. He could appear anywhere in the world in an instant. Adrian could stop wars and make people kings. He could change election results and bring honest people to power. Adrian could heal the world and create a global utopia. He could truly fix everything and bring total peace. He chose not to.

Adrian watched as he walked among these people. It did not matter what a god like being did for them. They would revert back to violence and agony and drugs and hatred. People were disgusting and undeserving and he knew it. The knowledge of them depressed him daily. So daily he walked among them looking for a sign of hope. 

His goal was to find one person with a glimmer of hope in them. One person that would change his mind. He made a promise to himself that when he found this person he would change the world. 

He often wondered why he was born with this potential gift. He had, in his youth, brought flat squirrels hit by cars back to life. He mended dogs that were eaten up with mange and left forgotten. Adrian had felt a kinship with nature and tried his best to help animals many times. He still tried to help the natural world. Animals did not destroy their environment so as often as he could he would aid nature. Adrian has thought about helping animals on the endangered list and populating them with a few hundred of their kin. Then his thoughts would return to man. 

Adrian wanted so much for this world to stop evolving into a place of evil. He wanted so much to use this gift to create a world of peace. He could in a snap of his fingers take all of the pain away from everyone. He often wondered if he alone could change human nature. He had asked himself over and over if he was the soul he was looking for. Adrian thought that just maybe he was wrong and that it could always start with him. When he would get encouraged he would see another senseless act of brutality. Then he would think that humanity was not worth saving all over again. Humanity still looked at each other as different from one another. They still had race wars and religion wars. They cut and stabbed and shot in the name of these differences. They stood over the dead victorious in their battles. They killed each other on a whim. Children shot each other in their schools. Bullies beat up smaller kids for differences that did not matter. Humans were born and bred for violence. Always violence and hatred reigned supreme. The inherent hatred of one another made Adrian more and more uncaring. It unraveled his nerves and then balled them up into a fist.

 Adrian did not know if he had the power to end humanity but sometimes the thought occurred to him to try. In the end he never tried. He simply hoped one day that in the middle of all the violence someone somewhere would look at the rivers of mixed blood and realize that it was all red. Still he hoped. Adrian walked for a century and the person never appeared. He traveled the world. All the continents and all the countries. He met popes and presidents. He spoke with religious leaders of every religion. He spoke with farmers and lawyers. Adrian met as many people as he could. In the civilized world he met not one person that had a pure heart. The civilized world was a waste. Evil and money and power had consumed the passions of art and peace and creation. He was at his wits end.

Adrian left the civilized world. He lived for a time with Australian aborigines and African tribal societies. He made his way to islanders who had never met the civilized world. He threw off the weight of civilization as they called it and began living from and with nature. Adrian has found happiness. He danced with them and sang with them and he hunted his own food and cooked it and consumed it. He became one with the world living with the tribals. The civilized world had forgotten how to live.

Adrian closed his eyes one night and focused all of his energies on what would save humanity. He did not solve their problems for them or cure diseases. Adrian did not win the war on drugs. He did not stop communism or fix democracy. Adrian instead focused on those paintings he saw in a cave in France. He gave humanity instead another chance completely, he started them over.

Adrian looked down on humanity now. He did not walk among them but he watched them discover fire and the wheel and as they started to emerge from their caves, he again had hope.