Hope to be...a hopeless romantic...hoping for the best...when all hope is lost.
Hope, I’ve always maintained, is like waiting with enthusiasm for something that is never going to happen. Such dedication!
And then I second-guessed myself.
Does it matter if what is hoped for eventuates or remains perpetually elusive? Is the practice of hope an event in itself; the lift in the shoulders, the spring in the step, the intangible high which gets us through? Maybe, that’s what hope is, no more or less than that. A survival mechanism of the highest order. An antidote to despair and disappointment which resuscitates the spirit, revitalises our connection to the world we live in, and inspires our momentum forward.
Hope is a self-generated experience which, with a select few thoughts or words, we can create for our own or for another’s benefit at any time and under any circumstances, irrespective of what is gained or lost in actuality. Granted, our individual perspective and personal biography directs our ability to conjure this sweet synaptic syntax, but with practice it can be ours for the taking.
Hope allies itself with truth and makes a friend of acceptance. It recognises what is possible and what is not. Hope has no expiry date but what we hope for does, and as such, hopes can be re-expressed, discarded, or adjusted in concert with our emotional evolution. Only with the advantage of hindsight can we declare a hope false or lost, and so often this declaration is made by an observer rather than the affected party.
Hope will always precede the outcome to which it is applied, a little like predicting the future, and therein lies the rub. As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as false hope, only that which is falsely applied. It is up to us to discern the difference.
'When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.'
- Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four