Living in hope...

I want to talk about hope. Well, I don’t really want to, but there is so much nonsense spoken about it that I’m going to anyway. There seems to be too many people on Facebook who are mad with hope. Hope for this, hope for that, Type ‘Amen” for this, like and share for that. They seem to believe that hope will change inevitable outcomes if they just hope that it will. I say, feel that damp on your cheek? It’s the wind blowing the piss back into your face.

Do I have hope? Well, for some things and sometimes, but generally I think hope is a charlatan, an imposter who, if you take off his hopeful mask, has a face that we should despair at. Too many people are mad with hope, fooling themselves that it’s always there and that it springs eternal, when in reality some situations are really simply hopeless. Just hoping doesn’t make it happen. Hope on its own is nothing, just a word, simply another way to dodge the truth. Hope is just a guttering candle waiting to go out.

Sometimes hope can galvanise us into action and we may just, as a result, get a better outcome. But hope alone isn’t going to stave off terminal disease, stop that bomb from exploding, or feed a starving child. “You have to have hope, live in hope, keep hoping” they say. But why? Hope is a fool and the friend of fools; too often hope turns out to be hopeless. And that’s the hard truth isn’t it?

Of course, in reasonable measure, hope sustains us. In great excess though, it distorts our perceptions making us believe that the unachievable is achievable. Nothing is impossible? Really? There’s always hope? Really? At its very worst hope dulls the mind, corrupts the heart and tricks the head into believing our own lies. Just like any drug - cocaine or heroin of whisky - hope is just another opiate to quiet and still the racing heart and mind, dull the senses and stop us thinking and doing.

No, I don’t really believe in hope. Let’s ditch it and get on with doing.