Hope Hurts

Hope... Nothing promises as much and more often than not nothing delivers less. Many a great man has claimed that without hope that is no meaning in life, for sometimes hope is the only thing that keeps us going: hope for success, for love, for fortune, for a better tomorrow. Indeed, without hope, what motivation can there be in life, that life has no possibility for becoming better, only worse? The parents toiling hoping for their children can succeed; slogging it out in the office for that elusive promotion, mugging into the night to get into college and shyly approaching the crush despite those butterflies in your stomach, all these are but expressions of hope. In a perfect world, our hopes will be realized and all will be fine and wonderful. In the harsh world of reality though, it is often much more cruel.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that nothing hurts more than hope being crushed, for hope conditions us to cling on the belief that things will turn for the better, that there is still that possibility of a miracle happening. Well, they do not call them miracles for nothing. More often than not our hopes are crushed, our spirits drained and there seems to be no meaning left in life. The worst part though is that these miracles sometimes actually do happen. Baseball can provide a perfect example of this. With its 162 game season, even the worst teams will win its share of games. Your team may be trailing by an ungodly number of runs, but there is always another inning, since time is not a factor. Your team may be beaten today, but there always seem to be tomorrow till the season ends, and then there is always next season (just ask the Cubs fans).

I don't think it would not be unreasonable to say that the many great people in our history derive their drive from their hope to make the world a better place. I have no doubt that many of them left their mark on the world we live in today, realizing their hope for a better tomorrow. For this I have to salute these people, the leaders, the scientists, the philosophers, the inventors, and a myrid of other famous personailites. However, does one not find it depressing that in our current world so many issues have yet to be resolved, and seemed unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. With every new generation comes new problems, and old issues resurface as well. No worries about people no longer hoping for a better future then.

Why hope really hurts though is that many times our hopes are beyond our ability to realise by ourselves. I hope that terrorism in this world in this world will stop, but I remember back in the past there were terrorists that were called heroes today, the Viet Cong, Dr Sun Yat Sen's nationalists and maybe even America's founding fathers for example. Who am I to judge them by hoping for their failure, despite me being convinced they were misguided? I had hope than the Reverand Martin Luther King Jr's hope (or dream?) of a world where people will not be judged by their colour of their skin can be fulfilled, but even today racial profiling persists, even in Singapore despite claims otherwise. Even on a personal level sometimes one cannot help but stereotype people.

Then why hope? Still one cannot deny it keeps many of us going, and there are still hopes that we can realize ourselves. Hope hurts, but still its better than no hope at all.

Quote of the day

"Hope, deceiving as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route."

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld