By Amerdeep Sanghera
Losing hope isn’t like losing your keys and finding them behind the sofa cushion. It isn’t, “Ta-da! Here it is!”
When you have hope, you don’t think about it. It sits quietly in the background, like your health or your breath. You only notice it when it falters, when it goes down the drain and when it does… well, there’s nothing left. Zilch. Nada.
Hope doesn’t disappear in one dramatic swoop. It leaks out slowly through noise, through drama, through the endless internal dialogue that makes your brain feel like it’s being run by a mini terrorist.
The truth is, hope lives in the little things. In beauty spotting, in small moments of noticing and in appreciation of life as it happens. One day, I realised my heart wasn’t singing the way it used to. Life had dulled and with it, hope had quietly slipped away.
So, I wrote. People often ask me, “Do you journal?” No, not in the traditional sense. I don’t keep neat notebooks filled with daily reflections. I write stories. I transform my experiences into quirky, whimsical narratives. It’s therapeutic. It’s my way of taking something dark or confusing and turning it into something alive, something that may help another.
Between 2018–2021, I started to believe in my writing. That belief came thanks to my friend L (now deceased), and my therapist J. Both believed in me without judgement, responding with warm, genuine reactions that made me feel seen. My twin brother, too, with his ever-repeated mantra: “You can do it.” Their faith in me carried me into the act of writing itself.
Recently, some of that belief had taken a hit. I was in a dark place. Hopeless. This essay is the result of that journey with hope. My losing it, my stumbling search for it and the glimmers that remind me (and hopefully you, if yours is low) that hope always finds a way back.
A week ago, I walked through a park in Sunderland feeling hopeless. Not the casual kind of hopeless that passes with a cup of tea and a good night’s sleep but the bottomless black void kind. The kind that feels heavy in the body and mind.
So I did what any sensible person would, I dopamine-dressed myself. I pulled on cheerful shades of pink over jeans and put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t know what else to do. The noise in my head was deafening.
I stopped at Café Floriana, a little spot across the park. The decor was bright, arty, quirky, with pinks everywhere. It felt like it had dressed to match me. The co-owner, noticing my allergies, went to great lengths to make sure I could order safely. It was such a small warm act but it landed in me like a reminder, kindness exists. Compassion is alive in the world.
I carried on walking through the park, noticing life all around. Children tossing food at ducks and seagulls, a lone seagull daringly eyeing my bag thinking there was food inside (No chance buddy. Unless you want a feast of books.)
Yes, my bag was full of books. I had ducked into the Winter Gardens library before my walk, hoping to uplift myself and found an illustrated children’s edition of The Hobbit. Bilbo and Gandalf would became my companions that evening, to restore a little piece of magic I’d lost.
There were other scenes too, a half-naked man surrounded by police, the flowers in the park mirroring the pinks in my outfit, life vibing with me in unexpected ways.
Life is always dancing to its own music. Even when we can’t hear it. Even when hope feels gone. That day, I couldn’t hear the music but I glimpsed it and that was enough to believe that one day the music will return and I’ll shimmy along with it again.
The next day, still heavy with hopelessness, I took an evening walk along Whitburn Beach. The coastal path stretched wide, the sea to my right, the main road to my left, flowers swaying in between.
I walked until I reached a bench by the cliffside. The waves crashed against the rocks with steady rhythm. The light softened and something inside me shifted.
For the first time in days, I felt hopeful. Almost as though life itself leaned in and whispered: “Look at all this beauty at your fingertips. You get to be a part of this. Isn’t that amazing?!”
The sun’s light painted everything golden. The wind moved through me. The cobwebs lifted. It wasn’t dramatic or overwhelming, it was simple. The most magical things in life are the simplest.
Nature grounds me. Sometimes it soothes, sometimes it jolts like electricity, bringing me back to life. On that walk, it reminded me that everything changes. The sand moves. The tides turn. The sky shifts and hope, like all else, ebbs and flows.
That evening, I could hear the faintest music again. I could almost feel my body loosen, ready to shimmy and shake.
I have a writing buddy in America. Every day, across time zones, we check in, sit down and write together. On the days when I wonder, What’s the point? this practice pulls me back.
The truth is I love creating. Writing is my therapy. My joy. My way of seeing magic in the ordinary.
When nothing else makes sense, I turn to my mantra: J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling. She was rejected dozens of times. She wrote Harry Potter in circumstances far from glamorous. She kept going and so will I. Hope or not.
Even though my life and career make little sense (What career? What direction? Honestly, lol), writing doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to exist and I love it completely.
A week later, I sat in the same park where I had felt that bottomless despair. This time, Elton John’s Are You Ready for Love played on the radio. A stranger nearby sang along loudly, unapologetically.
I smiled. Hope had returned. Not loudly. Not triumphantly but subtly. Quietly. As it always does.
Hope isn’t something to hold onto or control. It isn’t a possession. It’s something to nurture. Today I feel it, tomorrow I may not but I know now that it always circles back.
Hope isn’t about grand miracles. It’s about noticing.
Notice life around you. Notice the flowers, the books, the kind café owner, the crash of waves. Notice the stranger singing Elton John off key.
Hope was never gone. It was only waiting for a little space to breathe and when you least expect it, you will hear the music of life again. Maybe quietly at first. Maybe enough to sway. Maybe enough to shimmy. Maybe even enough to dance.