"Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made"

Lu Xun’s passage explores the paradoxical and collective nature of hope through a vivid metaphor. At first glance, hope appears elusive: it cannot be neatly defined as either existing or not existing. Rather than presenting hope as a concrete object or innate force, he likens it to roads that traverse the expanse of the earth. Originally, the earth is without pathways; the ground lies untrodden, neutral, and undefined. Roads take shape only as people repeatedly travel the same direction. Over time, these passages become recognizable paths, gradually emerging through collective action and repetition.

Hope, then, is not a pre-existing certitude granted by fate or nature, nor a merely subjective illusion. It is something that comes into being when many people persist, desiring, striving, and moving toward a shared vision or possibility. Just as the ground beneath our feet becomes a road through continual passage, hope materializes through persistent human endeavor and communal belief. When individuals act together, their combined effort creates possibilities where none were visible before; the new path is both an outcome of action and a catalyst for further movement.

This metaphor also points to the dynamic and contingent aspect of hope. There is no singular, preordained path, different groups may forge different roads, and every generation or society may create new routes where they are needed most. What matters is not whether hope exists independently, but whether people are willing to walk together and persevere. Through repeated striving, their collective footprints turn the unknown and impassable into a marked trail. In this way, hope is always in the making: an ongoing process shaped by human imagination, solidarity, and tenacity, continually recreated as long as there are those determined to walk forward, forging meaning and possibility out of barren ground.