I don’t believe in hope. Hope is what enables you, when your head is being held under water, to believe it will end soon. If it doesn’t, you die. Far better to be able to live without oxygen. I have had my head held underwater figuratively for years, yet survived. Why? I don’t hope: I keep moving.
Purpose is the alternative to hope. For me to keep trying, there does not need to be any prospect for success. I do what I do because it seems like the right thing to do, and I therefore choose to do it.
Hope is a dependence on the future. It is a dependence on external events. People whose hopes have been dashed repeatedly tend to become cynical and apathetic. Yet, we can all control our internal states to a great extent. I’m not an unhappy person. Most of the time, I actually feel pretty good, especially considering the emotional asceticism of my life. I laugh a lot; I sing (badly) a lot.
I see so many people getting into these profound funks of one sort or another. It’s all falling apart. There’s no use. blah, blah, blah.
Maybe thing are falling apart, but I speak from experience when I say the antidote is to get yourself in the game, and work to make things better. Hope is not necessary for this.
It makes no matter how small the effort is, and results don’t matter. Obviously, try to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but any action forward is better than pessimistic hand-wringing. Fire, then fire again. All great successes in the world have been largely the outcome of small things done by forgotten people.
If you hope in yourself, then you can determine the outcome, n’est ce pas?