I wonder if hope is applicable any more in this modern world.
In an age where almost everything can be explained or reasoned by means of physics, biology, chemistry, technology, or good old cause-and-effect logic, is there any room in our psyche for the concept of “hope”? Clearly it still exists in our culture, but is it necessary? Is it healthy, or are we simply deluding ourselves into a fantasy world?
I’ve always thought of hope as, “emotional wishing”, and in many contexts, I think this description fits it pretty well. Hope is often viewed as the true wishes of the heart, the desires of the inner person for events to transpire in a particular way, to turn out in the favor of the hopeful or of their friends and family.
Wishes are, for the most part, irrational longings. They are what people want to happen regardless of the probability of it actually coming to pass. Despite all odds or impossibilities, wishes remain a staple part of many people’s lives, coming into play both as children and adults, simply changing in content as the individual moves through life. Some consider wishes to be free; they are the unfettered desires of the mind, free to float about, unchained from reality’s sensibilities and accountabilities.
I have always viewed wishes as being quite dangerous and often inappropriate. Large amounts of wishing often means that the individual is not tied closely with reality in their mind, or they are avoiding the arduous task of dealing with harsh and unpleasant events and situations. Using wishes in this manner is a self-delusion akin to drowning your sorrows in an alcohol-fuelled fog, only this one is completely self-brewed and bottled, labelled with fantasy, corked with irrationality, and leading up to one hell of a “morning after”, complete with a psychological walk of shame.
Wishing as a child for events is simply a matter of being young and ignorant of the inner workings of reality; wishing as an adult is a denial of the basic fundamentals of life, resulting in a moment of irrationality — a cowering of the mind behind its fantastical blanky. On the whole, wishing ends up being a fruitless waste of time and energy in most cases.
Hope would no doubt be described by people in a much different manner. There is an element to hope that wishing does not encompass; a sense of purpose, of assuredness, or guarantee. The hoper is often very committed to their vision of reality.
The religious would say that their hope for the spiritual rewards and gifts are backed by their tenants; their hopes are the true longings of an inspired and faith-filled heart, backed with a spiritual insurance policy and guarantee of deliverance. Years of study and teachings, exposure to the ideas of the faith, and stories of others who have benefited from their particular religion lend much “evidence” to their experience, often making doubt a thing to keep far away from the core of the belief.
Others view hope as a sort of emotional bridge between what you really desire to happen and the reality of the situation. In this manner, hope appears to be a wish backed by some rationality or evidence, but not fully, and the desire to merge the current reality with the proposed end result is filled in with emotion and desire in the form of hope. Perhaps Johnny has a job interview with Google. He know he has a decent chance of getting a job, but he’s not certain of it, so he hopes that the result will be a new position. There is nothing at all to suggest that he has the job in the bag, 100%, but it’s leaning in a certain direction. Hope, in this case, does the rest of the work.
So is hope harmful? I often wonder about this because, although wishing is purposely unbacked by evidence or rationality, there are certain moments in which hope plays a similar role. There are
great
swaths of
people who rely
upon their
own justifications for
their hopes, no matter
how self-deluded they are. There are great swaths of people who rely upon their own justifications for their hopes, no matter how self-deluded they are. Their hopes are rationalized out by their own logic, but that evidence is flawed to start with, so the resulting hope is likewise erroneous.
Thus, I usually try to shy away from making both wishes and hopes for my life. If I find myself utilizing one of these justifications for holding onto a vision of an alternate or futuristic reality, I chide myself, mostly because I can never be sure that my own rationalizations for feeling a particular way have a foundation in unbiased logic. I can say that I hope that my child is beautiful, but I have no evidence to support this thought. Of course, I have no evidence to the contrary, either, so my stakes are evened out in this particular case. But the point stands that I probably do not have a rational reason and I am better off in the long run if I mull over the odds as they really are and not as I wish them to be.
A great deal of people would no doubt argue against the idea that hope is no longer applicable, saying it gives emotional and mental coping power to those in difficult situations, allowing them to continue on in the face of adversity. While I agree that it does seem to have empowered the many inspirational folk to weather the storms of life, I wonder what delusions they have had to ascribe to in order to accept such hope into their minds to the point where it was a motivational factor? Which person is more likely to be wiser and better balanced after an experience, the one that states, “I always had hope that this would turn out OK” or the one that shakes their head and says, “Look, I didn’t have a hope in the world. Everything was against us, nothing was going right, and we buckled down and did what we could. The fact that we ended up here is nothing short of amazing.” Which person has learned a more valuable lesson in life?
I do not think that hope is completely and utterly useless. There are times in which we should allow ourselves to go, to dream the impossible dream, to envision the world that we would create if our minds would allow us. Like a daydream, these fuel creativity, passion, inspiration, and amusement. It is, however, difficult to recommend the path of hope as a regular implement when life instead calls for wisdom, rationale, and realistic coping skills. These tools end up giving the person a much firmer foundation upon which to weather the hurricanes and persevere through all the nasties that are thrown at them.
I wish for you, all of you, the best and most productive use of hope in your lives.
Author’s Note: This entry is the second round in a Blog-Off run by Courtney Slavin of Five Second Dance Party. Each week we have to write a blog entry centred around one word. This weeks’ word is, “hope”. To read the blog entries of others that are participating, head on over to The List. The proceeds of this Blog-Off go to support breast cancer research and prevention. Â And who doesn’t like breasts, really?
You know, I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t help but be flustered by the whole thing. I can’t imagine how dreary and pessimistic it would be to live in a world where reality was it and hopes were for the weak and light of brain. (I know that’s not exactly what you said and you allowed for exceptions, but…) I think a world like that would be devoid of all color and fun and fantasy and that’s not really a place that I want to be.
“Wishes are, for the most part, irrational longings.”
“On the whole, wishing ends up being a fruitless waste of time and energy in most cases.”
“It is, however, difficult to recommend the path of hope as a regular implement when life instead calls for wisdom, rationale, and realistic coping skills.”
There were more, but these three quotes stick out. They just made me sad that your life is so structured in the rational that you do not even allow yourself the simple pleasure of wishes and hope. Rational thought is good but it can only take you so far.
I think everyone needs a little magic in their lives and wishes and dreams help provide that.
Struck a couple of nerves, I think. And I wonder, does it make you upset because you truly disagree, or because I make sense and it’s painful to have the fantasy shattered?
At any rate, I’ll try to clarify and reword a few points from the above. I think hope, wishes, and dreams all have their rightful place. I do not, however, think that they hold as much importance as most people tend to give them. There’s two reasons why I think so:
1. Disappointment — Live is never what you expect it to be. Even when you have tons of evidence and information that something will happen in a particular way, it never ends up being how you envisioned. There are tons of twists and turns and changes that you never expect even in your craziest dreams. Those that hope and wish too much end up with tons of disappointment all the time when life does what it does best — throwing whole boxes of wrenches in the gears. I used to hope in high school that I would go to college, do excellent, graduate with a kickass job, meet the girl of my dreams while I was there, get married, 2.5 kids, etc, etc. None of that came to pass how I hoped and dreamed it would. Most of it, not even close.
So, I learned that life is, at best, a matter of expecting the unexpected. Doing so doesn’t allow for much serious hoping and wishing. Therefore, I try to curtail such activities when it concerns real, serious stuff. Does that mean that I don’t wish or hope from time to time? No, of course I do. I also sit on my ass and watch crappy TV on occasion, too. I think both activities have about the same merit, however.
2. People who Hope and Wish and Dream instead of Living — There are far too many people who fail to live in the current moment and instead choose to render fantasy landscapes in their minds of how their lives will be one day in the future. While I can somewhat understand why they might do this, especially if their life really sucks, it still ends up deluding them and preventing them from accurately and responsibly taking care of the issues at hand. Essentially, living the life they have now instead of waiting for what “might be” which, as I said above, almost never happens. Time and time again you hear of someone in denial about their relative dying from cancer, or about their children being completely hellions and needing help, or someone’s alcohol problem. Denial is hoping for what isn’t and failing to accept or acknowledge what is. While denial is sometimes a coping mechanism, it is also sometimes a means for avoiding the heartache of dealing with the situation.
I only wish for everyone to realize both the joys and sorrows of the Here and Now, because so many fail to do so and only in retrospect do they realize their mistake, rendering it too late to do so. Hope, Wish, and Dream if you must for your own entertainment and “magic”, but please don’t use it as a means to escape and avoid.
Things don’t turn out how I imagine they will, but most of the time, things are more interesting that way. I went to school in NY because I dreamed of being in the horse industry. Now, I’m back at home because I realized that dream was unlikely to become reality without having to give up things I was unwilling to give up and things have been a lot more interesting since. Sure, I miss my friends and stuff, but I have a job at a barn and I’m learning things I never would have learned at school. I’m going back to school in the fall, but I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m looking forward to that adventure.
I think the real problem with dreams is that we get so stuck on our dreams happening the way we want, we pout when it doesn’t work like that, rather than finding joy in what we have. But I haven’t done any scientific research or anything. *grin*
Tracy, I fully agree, and I guess that was rather my general point, to not get lost in your dreams and hopes and wishes when you have what you have in front of you.
Great Piece!
Your work is not risk free, and I think it is great you articulated your impression so well.
If we all had the same idea or belief system the world would not be as interesting as it is. I love to learn different opinions, and the whys and wherefores of folks’ choices.
As everyone has written more than I myself could find within me to read, I will say only the following in the hopes it has not been stated nor negated.
Hope and wishing is functional, as is religion. Just as religion, when well founded and handled in moderation using man’s ability to reason you find a tool that people can use. You may say to yourself, but this is merely psychological, and not functional, and thus Hoping is still benign.
I would argue that it matters not how “psychological” you would like to call something, if it has an effect on behavior than it is indeed real, because we can measure behavior and thus changes in such. It matters not if it is a positive or negative effect.
To find the answer to that would take a very large study sample in modern scientific thinking, but most philosophers would agree to such a degree that hope generally instills a positive change in emotion and thus behavior that it can be logically assumed for the purpose of argument. That is to say that it is widely assumed that hope promotes a positive change in a person, and this is universally accepted as having such a property.
I would digress for you for a moment, and I say this at the end here, because it would put an end to much of your argument, by saying that hope is not so much “emotional wishing” as it is “physio-emotional believing”. That is to say it creates a biological effect on a person, measured by either a change in brain chemistry or actual behavior which alters the state of one’s reality. Myassertion is based on the assumption that people are only truly “hoping” when they strongly want a specific desired outcome enough to work for it, or believe it will occur and are working towards it. And I say this because if you tell me you are “hoping” that you will get an ‘A’ on your term paper, then you have done or are doing something to make the ‘A’ happen, and not turning in a blank piece of paper. (Note this does not mean you are applying yourself with the entirety of your potential.