Table of contents for Hope...
- Hope Fails
4/5 Update: Hope failed to generate much interest for discussion. That’s appropriate.
Hope. Is it a wonderful, positive thing? Or is it an empty self-delusion? What does hope mean to you? What part does hope play in your daily existence? pith… wants to know. Here’s the basic definitions and some pithy quotes as fodder for your thoughts:
Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.” – Wikipedia
1. (verb) hope, trust, desire; expect and wish; “I trust you will behave better from now on”; “I hope she understands that she cannot expect a raise”
2. (verb) be optimistic; be full of hope; have hopes; “I am still hoping that all will turn out well”
“When Pandora opened Pandora’s Box, she let out all the evils except one: hope. At the time, the Greeks considered hope to be at least as dangerous as all other evils in the world.” – Wikipedia
“Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” – George Iles
“Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.” – Robert G. Ingersoll
“We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” – Barack Obama
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out” – Vaclav Havel
So, what do you think? What’s hope mean to you?
{ 3 } Comments
Allow me to say that hope is all of the above. Let me add that wIthout some relation or exposure to hope, in some regards, I believe there could only be nihilistic attitudes. Essay forthcoming…
Hope is looking to the future, as hope cannot take place in past or present (actually, the hoping can take place in present, but the result can only happen in the future).
It’s a longing.
Hope is having faith about the outcome of something, whether good or bad – but what does it accomplish then?
The problem is that hope implies faith or wish, and therefore, it is a pipe dream of sorts (unless it works out for your benefit, which of course is never guaranteed).
Hope almost always has an uncertain outcome.
You may hope that the asshole who is banging your wife falls off a cliff, but the thought (hope) itself doesn’t accomplish anything. Equally, you may hope for something positive to happen, but that does not mean it’s going to happen.
Unless hope is acted on in some way in its future (after the initial hoping stage, i.e., present), what is its point?
I’ve been wrestling with this fucking web site on and off for 3-4 weeks, examining bits of code I can’t comprehend, but gradually, line by line, character by character, sussing this shit just enough to make the slight, tedious and VERY CAREFUL changes to make pith… look the way I want. By this morning, only 1 last thing remained: making a banner ad appear, something that doesn’t matter that much to me, but I wanted it anyway.
Almost there when…. Pfft! All gone. Utterly gone. Nothing. Nada. Hours upon hours of fully finite mortal life wasted, tossed to the bin of shit and history.
And now? Begin again. Or give up. If I begin again, hope SURE as hell has no part. If I give up and leave this site as it is or go back the much simpler (and perfectly fine, imo) theme, hope will have nothing to do with that either. Hope is irrelevant. I either will start again or I will choose not to do so.
Does hope bring weeks of mind-numbingly tedious work back? Hell no. Will hope help me get the site back to where it was when I start all over again? Fuck no. My energy level, patient wife, understanding kids, remaining mortal time and tedious work will do that.
Tell me hope is useful right now. Go on.
Yes, that’s a threat.
10 people, at best, might read this. That makes the whole beginning again seem as irrelevant as hope.
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