Website / Not Always Hopeless

Not Always Hopeless, now under the inspirational tag, is a sister site of Not Always Right, added to the site's network in 2016. In a departure from much of the rest of NAR, this site is dedicated to showing off the best in people; its contents are generally happier and feel-good stories involving heartwarming moments, acts of kindness, people coming to the aid of others in trouble, and more. As usual, it's best to take these stories with a grain of salt.

As of November 2019, the Hopeless subsection of the page has been removed. It has been replaced with Inspirational, a subsection dedicated to stories of inspirational stories of people going beyond their general duties to help someone. These stories are not in a category unto themselves, but rather are found in the other categories and tagged with the word "inspirational."

Note: Due to a restructuring of the entire NAR site network, the hyperlinks below may or may not work anymore.

Not Always Hopeless contains examples of:

• Angel Unaware: One possible explanation for this story.
• Animal Gender-Bender: Averted in this story— the shopper needed an anniversary card for a same-sex couple, so the one with two brightly-colored peacocks is perfect.
• Badass Pacifist: One girl saves another from a violent crime at the train station through The Power of Rock.
• Bait-and-Switch: A story of a boy being left alone for a while in a store seems like it's setting up for the child having been left unattended in the store by the mother who thought the staff would be willing to babysit, as is common on Not Always Right. Turns out the mother just went into the changing room and probably would have been back in short order had she not collapsed from a long-standing fever. This being Not Always Hopeless, the mother makes a full recovery once she's found and taken to the hospital.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: A rare heartwarming variation here wherein a 15-year veteran paramedic is called in by HR and QA to review a recent case. Fearing he'd done something wrong recently, the paramedic reviewed all of his recent cases to try and figure where he messed up, but couldn't find anything. It turns out the meeting was with a pair of new parents and their three-week old baby, whose lives he had saved about a month prior. To him, helping them was just another part of the job, but the gratitude they showed was one of the those rare instances that made the events so memorable.
• Character Witness: A homeless man trying to interview for a job has no references. However, one of his interviewers has seen him helping out daily in the complex's busy parking lot, and immediately vouches for his work ethic and kindness. He gets the job.
• Cool Old Lady: The narrator in this story expects the stereotypical Christian grandma to rant about alternative beliefs being evil. Instead, she's curious, respectful, and just wants to know if they have any books about gardening.
• Crazy Enough to Work: In Whistle While You Work It Out, customer service rep notes that the customer he's helping is nice and polite, but not Internet savvy. He asks if anyone else in the house is good with the Internet; the only one home is the customer's five-year-old grandson. The customer service rep asks to put the kid on the phone, figuring it's worth a try. Even though the kid can't read, he does know letters and is fast on the computer; in thirty minutes, with the rep's instructions and spelling out the words, he's helped his grandfather set up the account and is repeating the instructions to his grandfather as he's typing.
• Determinator: After a frail old woman with possible dementia is evacuated from back-to-back hurricanes without any documentation or known relatives, one of the shelter volunteers admits they're ready to start cold-calling churches to find someone who knows her. Fortunately, they get in touch with her (understandably frantic) son before it comes to that.
• Failed a Spot Check: The hotel guest in this story notices a newly-transitioning male-to-female clerk wearing the same outfit every day, and is worried that she can't afford clothes. The guest's wife has to point out to him that the other hotel workers are also wearing the same outfit every day — it's a uniform.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: A scary-looking goth couple is hand-feeding squirrels in the park.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: A shy little girl who loves pink... and also motorcycles.
• Good Samaritan:
  • A man going door-to-door finds one door answered by a miserable alcoholic, completely abandons his original purpose, and stays with them for several days to help them sober up and get through the nasty withdrawal before taking his leave. May be a case of Angel Unaware; the submitter him/herself doesn't seem too sure.
  • The pizza delivery guy in this story discovers that his order was placed by an abusive ex-husband trying to force his former wife into bankruptcy by ordering pizzas she can't pay for because she can barely afford to feed herself and their children. The pizza delivery guy pays off the entire order out of his own pocket, lets them keep the pizzas with instructions how best to freeze and reheat what they don't eat right away, and offers to personally pay for any future orders the wife needs to feed herself and the children.
    I’ve had my own share of experiences similar to yours, and turning an act of hate into an act of empathy is enough for me.
  • This stranger saw a depressed college student getting ready to jump off a bridge over a railroad track in the middle of the night, stayed with them until morning, heard out their problems, and called an ambulance to make sure they got the help they needed.
  • This teenager found a lost credit card and immediately Google-searched the name on it, found the owner's workplace, and called them to leave a message that she'd found their credit card and would like to return it to them as soon as possible. (The owner, meanwhile, discovered they'd lost their credit card and were retracing their steps in a panic when they encountered her.)
  • This story has two: a bus passenger (the submitter) who helps another passenger that only speaks Spanish and has gotten on the wrong bus; and the bus driver, who makes arrangements with the bus company to put him up in a hotel so he can get on the right bus the next day.
  • This pizza place doesn't think anything of a guy calling in an order for pickup, until the next phone call comes in from a crying girl. She'd barely managed to scrounge enough money to buy formula for their newborn, when her boyfriend took the money and her car to get himself a pizza. The restaurant staff instead sent the pizza to the young mother, along with two tins of formula, diapers, pacifiers, a couple orders of pasta, and a note offering her a job. For bonus heartwarming points, this incident finally got the girl to call her parents (she'd been forced by her boyfriend to cut off contact) — when the delivery driver arrived, he found the girl's father and brother hauling all the now ex-boyfriend's property out of the house.
• Heal It with Booze: Present from Kosovo.
• Hidden Depths:
  • A friend in this story is described as being antisocial and enjoying making a habit of being annoying. Therefore, it's surprising when a seemingly stereotypical teenage girl runs up to him and holds a cordial conversation with him. When the others mention they've never seen anyone so happy to see him, he replies, "You’ve never seen me talk a 17-year-old girl out of jumping off a bridge, either."
  • A young woman with limited use of any language suddenly has a conversation with a boy in Spanish, which her parents never taught her.
• Honorary Uncle: This bride includes her best friend's mother as one of the deceased relatives honored at her wedding.
• Innocent Inaccurate: A kid wants to be a "sugar daddy" when he grows up... because he thinks it means someone who buys kids candy when they can't afford it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Upon realizing a "problem" teenager has actually been on probation, in and out of institutions, out of school, and friendless, for far longer than her original crime warranted, the probation officer yells at her for not drawing attention to it sooner... and dismisses all charges, on the condition that her mother gets her back into school so she can graduate.
• Karmic Jackpot: Frequently.
  • The winning story for about ten years and running features this. A photographer that specializes in children's portraits makes an exception for his "appointments only" rule when a mom with a very sick child comes, and tearfully prepares to ask because her daughter may not live long enough for the waiting list. The photographer says, " I’ve been waiting all day to take a photo of someone as beautiful as you!" He then spends several hours after his usual photography time taking photos and editing them with the mom's help. Then he refuses money despite the effort because it feels wrong to ask the mother of a sick child to pay. A few months later, the girl and her mother return, and she's all better! The mother is exasperated when the photographer still won't accept payment, and asks if she can at least take him out to dinner to thank him. He concedes to that. They end up getting married, and the photograph is blown-up and still in their lounge room.
  • This little girl, whose family is tight on money, was more concerned with the rest of her family having a good Christmas than herself, as her letter to Santa began by asking for gifts for her siblings, then for the fixings for a good meal, and only then did she ask for something for herself. Lo and behold, a few days before Christmas, a bunch of brightly-wrapped presents (which turn out to be exactly what the submitter had asked for in her letter) turn up, along with a huge Christmas ham. The submitter later learned that a postal worker looking for a family to play Santa to had read her letter and been moved by the extent to which she was putting everyone else first and decided to give them a Christmas miracle.
• Loophole Abuse: In this story, a family suffers the loss of their father, and as a result their mother wouldn't be able to afford the condo at her retirement home anymore. The retirement community's accountant calls and says that the mother will be moved to another condo within the home because the one she's in is getting renovated, and the rent will be reduced for the inconvenience. Thing is, the condo is being eliminated to expand their other facilities, so it won't ever be renovated, meaning she pays the reduced rate indefinitely. Through their system, the retirement community threw the now-widow a bone, and as the submitter says, she was able to stay in the place that she loved until she died.
• Rousseau Was Right: The main point of the site is that people are nowhere near as cruel as they are on the rest of the Not Always sites. Zigzagged, however, in that there are still a few jerks - but when they show up, the focus of the story is about them getting taken to task.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: This is why this photographer refuses to take payment from a mom asking for him to take photos of her sick child, despite the extra effort he put in to see her after hours. He says that it was more important to him that the kid was happy.
• Shamed by a Mob: A political extremist shouting down the history teacher's speech at a graduation ceremony finds the graduates and their families united against her, forcing her to back down and let the teacher finish.
• Sincerity Mode: A frantic customer wanting a good photo for a dating app offers to make a clerk his best man at his future wedding when the man helps him find a simple solution. The clerk says a thank-you card would be enough. After the man gets married, his wife comes to deliver a card showing they tied the knot.
• Talking Down the Suicidal:
  • A friend in this story mentions talking a teenager out of jumping off a bridge.
  • The man in this story brings the submitter back from the brink just by saying he'll lend an ear to them.
• To Be Lawful or Good: These hospital staff decide to falsify the paperwork after insurance declines a patient who can't afford chemotherapy. One of the doctors has a student (the submitter) shadowing them; after the meeting, the doctor explains to the student that they deliberately allowed them to overhear the conversation because it was a learning experience: you can follow the rules, or you can save lives.
• Uncle Pennybags: One rich man comes in to a movie theater on Thanksgiving, and proceeds to hand out twenties to the staff, even coming back the next day to make sure he didn't miss anyone.