More of a thought flow than a polished write up.

Maybe my world’s view is just shrinking, getting narrower with time. Everywhere I look, it feels like the top one percent are the ones calling the shots. Someone wakes up and decides, "this is a good time to fund this idea," and suddenly people line up to pitch in ways that please them. Or maybe someone at the top thinks, "my family went through this, I don’t want others to," and the money flows there.

Somewhere in between, my own motivation slips. The chase gets tiring. Some days I feel I would be happier doing something entirely different, teaching (maybe?) and/or even running a small grocery shop. Work that comes with its own challenges, but at least the uncertainty is different.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about how stories don’t feel utopian anymore. I’ve been feeling that too. Back in the 80s and 90s, sci-fi carried so much optimism about the future. Now that sense of hope feels like it’s fading. But then again, maybe it only looks that way. Maybe it’s the feeds I scroll through, the conversations I have, the people I hear from, all of it narrowing down into a single lens.

Sometimes I wonder if I just sat with a smaller, closed circle, but of hopeful people, maybe my world view would shrink too. For better or worse, I would not feel it this way.

Maybe hope is only as wide as the circle we choose to sit in.