Fickle Hope

Legend has it that when Pandora’s Box was opened all the evils were unleashed upon the earth. Envy, Crime, Hate, Disease, and Greed: you name it and it was released. However, amongst all the evils contained within the box, Hope remained meekly at the bottom, the last of all to be released.

We always allow ourselves to feel hope despite the severity of our situations. It is the one thing that makes us feel as though we can get through anything, or so we make ourselves believe. Hope is a fickle, reckless and fleeting emotion. It is very easy to hold on to this emotion but all it serves to do is set you up for further disappointment.

Hope is dangerous. It is a state in which one believes that a good outcome is possible when all else seems to fail. However, in my experience I have found that all hope does is makes you believe the impossible, makes you go against all logic and reason. It is associated with the heart as opposed to the brain. Clearly, it is something illogical, pointless and painful- as is everything emotive.

The problem with hoping is that when things don’t work out- which is quite the usual occurrence- you find yourself with a raised JVP and tender liver heading toward heart failure. It isn’t worth it really. What makes it worse is realising that you are the cause of your constant disappointments and pain. If we didn't hope that things would get better then we wouldn't find ourselves disappointed if it didn't work out.

I guess that is the true reason that hope was contained within a box of evil. It is the sort of painful emotion that is so well disguised that we don’t even realise the damaging effects. We offer hope to any person we see in pain believing that it will make them feel better. Worse, we even feel a sense of accomplishment when we find that we have managed to make someone smile in spite of the pain they are in. Yet, when their world comes crashing down, all the hope in the world is not going to make them feel better. If anything, all the hope you offered them will only make the fall that much harder.

The problem lies in that we have lived off the detrimental effects of hope for so long that it has become second nature. It is so easy for us to fall into the spiral of despair and believe that hope is the anchor that will save us from drowning that we fail to see the harm in it.

We all hate to admit that we are falling off a cliff mere seconds from crashing in to the earth, so we hope that our backpack will miraculously turn into a parachute. This truth is we are going to hit the ground. The difference being that is will come as quite a shock, laced with unbearable pain, simply because we were living with the hope that we’d be soaring in the sky instead of ending up a bloody mess.