What do you hope for?

I want to share a quote I read last month in a book written by the Aga Khan titled Where Hope Takes Root. It reads, ''We inhabit an overcrowded planet with shrinking resources, yet we share a common destiny. A weakness or pain in one corner has the tendency, rather rapidly, to transmit itself across the globe. Instability is infectious. But so is hope''

Hope is fluid, it changes from person to person and it weighs more to some than to others. There is no doubt that however unique our hope may be, we share a commonality with all those who have hope. When we hope, we believe in our reasons. Still, what we hope for is not as important as the underlying fact that we have hope.

Pluralism can perhaps be defined as the acceptance of diversity. In Canada, we celebrate pluralism in our daily lives. In this nation, citizens embrace other cultures, languages and traditions just by going to school, to the workplace or to a social outing. Tolerance is not the creed of Canadians - it is acceptance.

I sense something spreading in the air, a mixture of acceptance and hope. When each Canadian believes in hope and has hope in something, we will be taking steps. When each Canadian shares that hope with another, we will be making great progress. When each Canadian embraces the hope of another, we will have arrived at our destination. We will be in the presence of not only hope, but in the presence of pluralistic hope. The birds that travel overhead will hear a beautiful song of unity and diversity, thirty three million citizens will be singing > we have hope.

To arrive at this destination of pluralistic hope, it is vital that we begin to share our hopes. Only then will others have the opportunity to embrace it. Our hopes do not need to be philosophical or elegant, but simple and precise.

I remember being in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, one day last summer visiting an orphanage. It was my first time going to one and beforehand, the only impression of an orphanage I had was from the play Annie. When we arrived, I remember feeling confused because this orphanage seemed more like a school. Over two hundred children were housed, each of them special in their own way.

Some of the children were unable to speak or hear, others were immobile or had missing body parts. This was not what I expected. Every single child was what would be considered here as a special case. There were children that had been abandoned, children that had no family and children that were diseased. Still, somehow, there was laughter, chatter and excitement upon my arrival.

I vividly remember walking into a room filled with elderly women. Each of them was disabled, small and aging. On a table to the side of the room was a young girl, perhaps aged 5 or 6. Upon seeing her, a tear slid quickly down my face. She was sitting on the table with both legs in full casts. Connecting the casts was a wooden stick covered in some sort of grayish plaster. She sat with her lower body motionless but her upper body swayed while her arms were shaking. I had never imagined someone could experience such pain. She gripped my hand tightly and I still wonder what she was thinking when she saw me.

She has grown up unable to separate her legs from each other. As a method of rehabilitating the girl, giving her a chance to walk one day, the orphanage nurses would forcefully separate her legs and plaster them away from each other. After two weeks in a cast, the girl was given two weeks without a cast, a cycle that was to continue until she was better.

I hope that no child ever has to suffer like her.

What do you hope for?