My life hasn’t exactly been always filled with bliss and comfort. I have faced a lot of challenges and have experienced my share of suffering — or so I hope — some of it self-inflicted. I have faced many challenges with mixed results. On some levels, the parade has passed me by as others have gone on to positions of responsibility and authority while I sit here basically a renter with a rusty car I bought for $3,000. I continue to work seven days per week and sometimes it is a challenge. I live on the edge of the racial divide and that impacts me every day, even if no one else recognizes it. As I move towards my 70^th birthday this summer, fear of getting old and dying creeps into my subconscious despite my best efforts to force it back down like bile caught in my throat.

And yet, I have hope and I am optimistic.

I found out long ago that I had to have hope and be optimistic if I were going to seek solutions to problems both large and small. I needed my thoughts to rise to the heavens unencumbered by negativity and hatred and even fear. I had to have hope if I were to find solutions because otherwise it would be an exercise in futility. Why would it matter?

But it did matter because the solution impacted the lives of other people and made their lives better. If I had no hope, there would be no solution. In spite of the odds, in spite of the enormity of the problem we face, we have to have hop. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. always said, ‘Keep hope alive.’

And while I have always had a somewhat cheerful disposition that could be read by others as being out of touch with reality — my counselor at Marquette University High School asked me quite incredulously if I knew I could go to fight in Vietnam within the next year and be killed because I think he thought I was somewhat vacuous between the ears — it gained definition when I read the sermons and writings of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I think back to the findings of the autopsy of Dr. King when they found he had the heart of an elder even though he was only 39-years-old. He was under tremendous stress and lived with death threats and the spying of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI not to speak of the millions of White supremacists who lived across the land. He of all people had a reason to say, ‘Forget about it.’

But Dr. King didn’t. He continued to dream, to be optimistic, about the world he lived in. He urged us to live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. He envisioned a day where we could all live in peace and respect each other.

And while we do not live in Shang-Ra-La and we still wait to live in Dr. King’s Beloved Community, the lives of millions of African Americans and other people of color are better off than if he never lived. Dr. King’s vision and hope made America better.

And Dr. King made me a better person as well. In my travels through and life in Mississippi, I learned to seek the truth and experience and understand the humanity and the potential of African Americans if only the oppression ended. Almost 50 years ago, I realized that Black Lives Matter. Although I was dismissed by many, I knew that truth and pursued it long before it became a catch phrase.

Back in 1972 when I worked at the University Catholic Center, I took a course on Dr. King that was taught by Sister Heffernan, I believe. And so I wrote a paper on how people perceived Dr. King. I went up to Richland Center to interview some Brothers I knew who played basketball for UW-Richland Center. They spoke of Dr. King in very human terms, almost like a Brother trying to make it just like all other African Americans. But Euro-Americans spoke of him in almost saintly, abstract terms. In many ways, that started my search for truth, a search I am still engaged in.

And so I am grateful to Dr. King for making me a better person, for setting me off on an almost 50 year search for the truth. I’m not there yet, but it’s been a heck of a journey. And I continue to have hope because of it. Keep Hope Alive!