Songs: It's Hard To Be Hopeful

notes / gigs / releases

It's hard to be hopeful
Very hard indeed
When stupidity keeps winning
And love loses to greed
When a faith in human nature
Starts to feel at best naive
It's hard to be hopeful
It's very hard indeed

It's easy to be cynical
It's tempting to give up
When the worst thing keeps on happening
The best thing never does
When optimism's always wrong
Dismiss it with a shrug
It's easy to be cynical
It's tempting to give up

Normally this is the point
At which I'd say
Come on everybody
Everything will be OK
But I must admit that I'm
Not feeing it today
The only thing to do
Is stop watching the news

Cos every time I turn it on
There's some arsehole who says
They've talked to normal people
And the normal people said
Whatever vile hateful spite
The arsehole has just said
So why don't I just switch off my television set
And go out and do
Something less boring instead?

Let's read a book
Let's ride a bike
Let's go on an open top bus tour and see the sights
I've kept up with politics for my whole life
And all that it's achieved
Is to make me believe

That it's hard to be hopeful
Very hard indeed
With the waterfall of awful
That pours out of my TV
But turning off the tap sometimes
Might give us space to breath
It's hard to be bopeful
Very hard indeed

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing



For most of my adult life I have tried very hard to stick to the idea that the vast majority of people are inherently good and decent and sensible (if they are given half a chance), but that has got much more difficult over the past six years or so, as people in general seem to have become determined to vote for the worst possible option at all opportunities.

As the first chorus says, usually I'd try to deal with this by finding a way to turn it all round and find an optimistic slant, but while writing this song I found that I couldn't do that. I do still TRY to see the good in things, but I think after all the evidence of recent years it's OK to be a bit fed up about it sometimes.

It's also OK not to feel you have to engage in it all time time too. A few years ago I found that I was getting SO wound up watching 'Question Time' every week that I decided to experiment with not watching it, and that helped immensely. I now have an hour a week when I can read a book, for instance, instead of screaming futilely at horrible people being horrible on telly. It doesn't mean that I don't have an interest in what's going on in the world, but it does mean that I can deal with it a lot more calmly!