Following on from my very old post; What is Hope? which I recently re-blogged, below is a new analysis of why I hate hope (what a change of opinion, and in only 3 years).
I may seem cynical. I can actually recall sitting in a Sociology class at college and my tutor calling me cynical, because I disagreed with him over Joseph Rowntree’s findings on poverty. I also remember my retort to him; “I’m not cynical, merely truthful and stating reality”. So, I wonder what changed within me; why did my opinions shift so radically from stating reality to becoming optimistically hopeful?
Hopeful is not a word I would use to describe myself now. Why? I actually despise hope.
Hope is a false friend. It is a cruel lie and a myth. Pandora should have been shoved head first in her antiquated box for her part to play its very existence. Why? Well because we cannot see hope, we cannot touch it, we cannot reasonably explain why it is; hope merely is or is not. This is not helpful or useful.
If you have hope you sail along foolishly thinking all will be well with the world. If you don’t have hope you realise life is a game of dodge ball (putting it politely). The best you can do with the latter scenario is laugh (possibly just as you might if you had hope); as who could imagine any other way of dealing with things that seem so grotesquely out of kilter?
“I just hope things will get better”; I am sicking of hearing this phrase! No, they won’t. You can’t just hope bad things away. Hope is another aliment just like being positive, and it wrecks havoc on your life (your real life), and you will never face the fact things are poop. SO, WAKE UP PEOPLE!
Hope is the thing that keeps you dangling in some strange in-between place that you can never really find. It is as frustrating and maddening as it would be searching for the end of a rainbow.
Without hope you probably do die in some metaphorical way, but with hope you will die anyway, but without realising you have been conned by the very thing you clung onto for comfort and truth.
Hope makes you believe in more, but it alone cannot get you what you want. Hope is not some miracle cure all, there is only you, and you alone may not be enough to get enough to make your life what you want.
“Abandon all hope ye that enter here”; yes please do as hope is not going to protect you from any storm, illness, death or mishap. I suggest arming yourself with something more powerful and potent to help you with that.
Sorry for being the cynic and distrusting the motives of hope, but to be blunt hope sucks!
The Savvy Senorita 
Oh, I don’t think hope is all that bad but hope should never replace basic pragmatism, which is where the problem is. Having dreams is fine, but it should inspire people to work for them, not sit around and hope they will magically come true. Essentially if you have hope without work, then nothing will ever happen (imo).
“I just hope things will get better” — is a self platitude and imo all platitudes suck.
Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Best philosophy to live by imo. 🙂
Hi, thanks for your comment. I do appreciate what you believe, and if that works for you fair enough. My response to your comment will be blunt, and will be classified as negative; this is not meant to offend you however, but I feel I can’t sugar coat how I see the world. On WordPress people are all so full of hope and ‘life is fabulous’ – it isn’t. I always expect the worst, and this never disappoints. I admit and accept life sucks regardless of what we do to try and change things. This view is derived from the fact that I have planned, always have worked to change and achieve things, plus always tried to fight and see the best in a bad situation. Yet even so, things will always eventually go belly up and become worse! I now accept that there are no real silver linings, and trying to change things or even hoping they will change won’t do a thing other than frustrate and create anger. I have recently discarded my dreams too, and mainly because I don’t see the point in wasting my time dreaming about that which will never happen (even if I apply the effort to attain a dream or not). Life is already filled to he brim with enough nonsense without adding dreams into the mix too! That is what I have slowly come to realise, and you know what – I wished I had recognised it sooner to save all the hassle. It certainly helps to see the fact life sucks and always will. I rather that perspective than hold onto any shred of nonsensical hope, or to fight forever against something that doesn’t want to move and change regardless of how much effort goes into it. I don’t state this for effect, sympathy, concern or advice either – I truly don’t get why anyone would think life is great, when clearly it isn’t.
Bex,
Don’t worry about being blunt! Blunt is great!
Here is where you are going wrong — you are extrapolating a broad world view based on your experiences, which does not work. Right now you are miserable, you hate life and everything you see is a shade of black and you are shocked when others do not see the world as you do. You are trying so hard to convince them that if they see the world the way you do, they would be equally as miserable. And when people don’t see it the way you do, it makes you a tad angry.
Here is the realist view — the world is neither good, nor bad. It just is. We can either be happy or not. That sounds super simple but being happy is extremely hard. Especially for people, like me, who struggle with depression. It is doubly hard because people who seem to be happy just piss me right off, because I am jealous. I want that happiness too, but I recognize that the issue with being happy is something I have to work at and is not in any related to the world.
I am actually much happier than I was a few a months ago (when I was suicidal, something I don’t share with a lot of people). Do you know what I had to change? My expectations. I had to stop being so hard on myself for not meeting some stupidly absurd expectations that I set for myself and ‘hoped’. I also had to remove my expectations from others. I stopped expecting people to come like my stuff, or say I am brilliant or whatever really stupid thing I wanted them to say about me.
I also had to start recognizing the beauty of others and the joy they bring to the world. Once I started sharing other peoples’ successes and help support their dreams and hopes, I found that I was happy. Often not many people will say thank you if I share their work on Twitter or Facebook, but I don’t care. I don’t share for their gratitude, I share because I think they are awesome. If they say thank you, awesome. If they return the favor and share my work, doubly awesome. But either way, I am happier with just sharing people.
Now here is the catch. These things work for me but I can’t say they will work for you. You are you and I am me and what works for one might not work for the other. But I can say that even though I am unemployed, have next to no money, in debt, and struggle with anxiety and depression — I am happier. I think hope is good and beautiful and I think there are people in the world that are amazing who I want to help succeed. These people brighten my day.
So, you don’t have to agree with me, that is okay. Just know, no matter how hard you try to convince me the world is an ugly place, you won’t succeed. And if you are not okay with that, that is still okay with me. You are you and I am me. We are different and that is okay.
I agree we don’t have to agree, and difference of opinion is normal enough and no hard feelings from it. I respect your opinion, and I am happy to have your comments. My response is that what my post and reply expressed are my thoughts and opinions – the same way as those who are exonerated for being ‘positive’ also state theirs. I wouldn’t try to convince anyone the world is ugly – it isn’t the world merely the people. Either way it’s not for me to convince you of either of those things. I only wish those people selling ‘positivity’ and ‘life is marvellous’ would be told to stop trying to convince, and brow beat us all into their world view too. I often require a sick bucket whenever I read that type of twaddle, as it is so far from most people’s marks. All of what I believe, and think is merely an alternative side to what people do forget about; the real life story. I am neither a positive nor a negative person, I am just being real and I am not succumbing to a notion of selling fantasy lives. I do dislike people who perpetually sell life as a bowl of peaches and cream (in that I won;t lie); in reality for most people life isn’t and won’t be. Recognising that and representing a real world alternative actually is a balanced and helpful method. There will be people, more than less, who wish to see that their life and their feelings about it aren’t as amiss or as fundamentally wrong as most of the ‘positive’ and ‘all is wonderful’ camps state that it is. All life does suck – if not always, mostly. I understand your points though, and I also can empathise with all you have experienced too (believe me). The fact you remain hopeful, and also keep moving on regardless of those facts is a great thing. I certainly wouldn’t wish for it to be any other way, as I wouldn’t want to see anyone to flounder. I only wish the best for everyone; if only that was true of everyone else I have encountered in my life. I am not nor ever have been a jealous person, that is not who I am and that is not my reasoning for thinking or believing what I do. I merely see and wish to state the reality of life, and its real limitations. None of it makes me ecstatic, but I have come to find myself ambivalent because I don’t care which direction I move in anymore. I do admit I have high expectations for myself, and high expectations of others to be kind, genuine and respectful – as this is how I would always conduct myself. Yet, others have high expectations of achieving material gains, commercial and fame based successes and so on and so on (which for me is high enough to be more often than not unreal). Small gains are overlooked in life, and not often shouted loudly about or desired. By stating all of this doesn’t signify that I underestimate myself or my life; I have lots to be proud and thankful for, but I now have more realistic expectations. What job I have or how new my new car is – doesn’t matter to me and in truth never did, but realising life is flat, dull and fruitless certainly means that those things that can cloud our perceptions (such as the material things, healthy living, being deemed attractive, travelling and good jobs) don’t cloud mine – as they are equally as worthless. I suppose I just can’t jump on the ‘life is wonderful’ bandwagon without admitting the real and severe flaws of it first!
OK, you`re not a fan of Freud, neither am I, but I hope you kike Nietzche (Human, All too Human, 1878)…
`Hope is the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man`
Well, I think you might call me a heathen in that respect John; I have never read Nietzsche! I therefore don’t really understand his mass appeal (sorry). I have merely always formed my own ideas, opinions and way of viewing the world. When I actually had to study philosophers such as; Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Voltaire, Engels, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Popper, Hayek, Voegelin, Foucault, Baudrillard – I disliked most of what they had to say, all except Marx. This was because at that time Marx made sense of what I had come to believe, and also echoed the opinions of my family (none of whom had ever read Marx). I strongly believe we make our own philosophy in life, out of all we see and experience. I think this is the only one that truly counts and can be seen as reflective.
I`ve only ever owned oen Nietzche book and couldn`t make head nor tails of it! I`ve found him good for quotes, though (I would put in a smiley here BUT I had my computer reformatted the other day and my keyboard appears to have forgotten where all the bloody symbols are)
That is refreshing to hear 🙂 (smiley – hopefully you can see it too just to compensate as yous is!) I met a lot of people obsessed by him, especially in Madrid. They were usually the people who I didn’t gel with, pretentious types (though not everyone who likes Nietzsche is necessarily this way – just those I encountered). You don’t him anyway John, you have enough philosophy of your own. .
LOL, I doubt that
Have faith in yourself John!