Unified Doctor’s Journal Entry #009: “Hope as Praxis: Why I Still Believe”

Location: Moored in the Fractaline Trench, where starlight folds sideways
State: Grounded. Not calm. But grounded.

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Hope gets a bad reputation in some corners of the universe.

They call it naïve.

A luxury.

An indulgence.

A trick you play on yourself so you don’t collapse under the weight of how bad things really are.

And I understand that.

I’ve felt it.

I’ve sat beside the end of things and watched the stars wink out one by one — not in glory, but in bureaucracy. In slow, preventable erosion. In silence.

And I’ve thought:

“What’s the point of hope, when the machinery grinds louder than mercy?”

But I came to this conclusion:

Hope is not a feeling.

It’s not a mood.

It’s not optimism.

Hope is praxis.

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Hope, in its truest form, is action.

It’s what you do when despair has made everything else seem reasonable.

It’s saying “yes” to the impossible, not because you believe you’ll win — but because you believe it’s worth trying anyway.

It’s standing between a child and a blaster, not because you think they’ll thank you, but because someone should.

It’s making tea when the news gets worse.

It’s writing stories when the records have been wiped.

It’s getting out of bed when the world feels too heavy.

That is hope.

A rebellion of presence.

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I’ve watched worlds fall because they ran out of hope.

Not fuel.

Not strategy.

Hope.

Once people believe that nothing can change, they stop trying.

Once they stop trying, they stop seeing.

And once they stop seeing, the worst things in the universe become invisible — and therefore inevitable.

Hope is what sharpens the eye.

Hope is what says, “This is not normal.”

“This does not have to be this way.”

That’s why tyrants hate it.

Because it cannot be legislated, only extinguished.

And even then, it tends to smoulder.

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Raven keeps a list.

She started it after we visited Eresh 9 — a planet that forgot how to mourn.

The list contains every small act of resistance we’ve seen.

A child who planted a tree where a battlefield used to be.

A teacher who smuggled banned stories into a curriculum.

An old soldier who laid down their weapon and picked up a paintbrush.

“Little hopes,” she calls them.

“They build something bigger than proof.”

At first, I didn’t understand.

But now I do.

Each small act is a lighthouse.

Not for others.

For yourself.

To remind you who you are when the sky turns red.

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I remember a moment — early in my lives, when I still thought myself more scientist than guardian.

I asked a being older than time why she hadn’t left the dying star she orbited.

She said:

“Because the star doesn’t need saving.”
“It needs a witness.”

That struck me like gravity.

To stay — not to win, not to fix — but to honour?

That’s hope.

To sit with grief and not let it erase you?

That’s hope.

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MINO, in his dry little circuits, once defined hope as:

“Pattern deviation in defiance of statistical probability.”

I quite like that.

It makes hope sound like a glitch in the Matrix.

A refusal to behave.

A spark of absurdity.

A deliberate statistical anomaly.

Yes.

Yes, that’s right.

Hope is absurd.

But it’s also necessary.

Because without it, all we’re left with is analysis.

And I’ve never seen a spreadsheet comfort the dying.

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There are moments — dark ones — where I’ve lost it.

I’ll be honest about that.

Moments where I saw no outcome that didn’t burn.

Moments where I walked away.

Let the planet fall.

Let the tyrant rise.

Let the moment pass.

Because I couldn’t bear to hope again.

But each time, something — or someone — pulled me back.

Roxi throwing a paint bomb at a Ministry drone.

Raven whispering a name she wasn’t supposed to remember.

MINO playing a lullaby to the stars.

Something small.

Something pointless.

And therefore something pure.

That’s the secret.

Hope is found in the irrational.

Because rationality bows to power.

Hope bows to life.

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I once defined hope to a species that had no word for it.

They asked if it was belief.

I said no.

Belief is what you think.

Hope is what you do, even when belief fails.

They asked if it was optimism.

I said no.

Optimism is about likelihood.

Hope is about choice.

They asked if it required evidence.

I said:

“No. But it creates evidence.”

That’s the best part.

When enough people act as if change is possible… it becomes possible.

Hope reshapes what’s real.

It bends the spiral.

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So this is what I’ve come to understand:

I do not hope because the world is good.

I hope because it can be.

I do not act because I am certain.

I act because certainty is the enemy of growth.

I do not stay because I believe I’ll win.

I stay because leaving means no one will.

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Hope is praxis.

Hope is defiance.

Hope is what remains when everything else has been taken.

And as long as I breathe —
As long as there’s a sky above the TARDIS —
As long as there’s someone, somewhere, worth saving —

I will keep hoping.

Every day.

Even when it hurts.

Especially when it hurts.

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Until tomorrow.

— The Unified Doctor