Random Musings- How Good is it to have hope?

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.
This was probably one of my favourite quotes from Shawshank Redemption. Or maybe this was the only quote I ever remembered.

I saw the movie Kandahar some time back and I now have a new favourite.

“Everyone needs a reason for living. Hope is that reason. For thirsty it is water, for hungry it is good, for lonely it is love , for a woman under full cover, hope is the day she will be seen.”

I recently went through a huge emotional change. I was building up my hopes on something so high that the thought of it coming crashing down didn’t even seem possible to me.

Turns out I was building a palace of cards completely ignoring the storm that was behind me the whole while just waiting for the right opportunity to give it a blow.

Sounds dramatic? Well, the effect on me was. Personally at least. I know a lot of people who are wise, matured and strong. I thought I was one of them but the last one year has disappointed me.

This came as a new year gift! I am not being sarcastic in calling it a gift. Disappointments are as important as victories. Someone once told me that I am not good at handling failures. Yes I wasn’t and now it is proven that I still am not.

But some failures teach you a big lesson. And believe it or not, no matter how short sighted you are as a person, there will come a time when you will look back at this and thank heavens that it happened.

After all, not all hopes are worth being nurtured. Definitely not at the cost of so many other good things that we ignore.

Which brings me to the original quote that I mentioned. It is very easy to talk about hope.

But how do we know what is worth hoping and what is not?

Just like we have dreams and aspirations which we categorise as optimistic, pessimistic and realistic ; we have something similar for hope.

Of  course there is nothing called pessimistic hope. It won’t even be a hope. But we can call it a negative one, specially if we are hoping it for somebody else. Ex?? I hope she rots in hell!! We hear it a lot, don’t we?

But we can choose to have  an optimistic hope or a realistic one.

Sometimes a quick reality check helps us know which one we personally are having.

It is very convenient to say ” one fine day, xyz or abc will happen”. Now this will be a realistic hope if you are working towards it or if the chances of accomplishing it depends more on you and less on fate or worse, on somebody else.

An optimistic or in some cases , foolish hope would be to depend on something totally unrelated to your own efforts and wait for it to happen.

As they say, we should happen to things rather than waiting for things to happen to us.

And if you currently have big hopes on yourself for something, it is time you gauge if it is realistic or just a foolishness!