"I don't believe in love. It's an illusion."

I remember the day my friend said this to me, casually, in the middle of a conversation on one of the books we were always reading in turns back in secondary school. We were both big fans of authors like Tom Clancy and Jeffery Archer Robert Ludlum (creator of Jason Bourne), and their stories of global conspiracies and secret cabals and massive conglomerates. And I remember thinking, even then, that some of his confident pragmatism was shaped by the nature of our diet.
And yet…
I struggled to imagine a world where love did not exist in some form, where people did not deliberately give of themselves for others. I couldn't. We talked about it, me raising my objections and he attempting to make me see sense, but I don't remember exactly what was said.
My friend was my first encounter with cynicism. Before then I only knew it in myself, and although I had no name for it then, I recognised that I was witnessing in my friend, the logical course for what I'd being toying with.
And I remember that conversation, because it was the first time I looked cynicism in the face and chose hope.
That day, I learned that hope cannot live on sentiment, because hope is a fight.