HOPE #7 by Marius

A musing about hope and dispair written by Marius, a Romanian perspective writer and photographer.

About hope… more or less.
I am sure if you go online and search for what is hope, Google will meet you with countless pages and articles about its definition, its importance, its power, its expressions, quotes, and so on. It’s what I did and what you’d expect, right? Having all the good information at hand, without the necessity to go deep into the search results.
But then I took a minute to think of something that it’s not already written, or at least not the positive-click-me-for-details-article displayed on the first page. In doing so, I came across the term “despair” — the other edge of the sword. Unlike the variety and abundance of information available for hope, despair has mostly definitions displayed in the top search results. And it makes sense. Why would anyone write about despair? It’s not the queen of the prom, nor the one that gets the spotlight. It’s the ugly duckling, sitting in the dark, to be avoided at all costs. You don’t search for despair, you search for hope.
And perhaps that’s part of some problem. You only search for hope when you’re in despair. Nobody searches for hope when they’re happy and on top of the world. And although again, this makes sense, we might want to reconsider that. Maybe next time, instead of running from despair, we could try and have a chat with it and understand why it is there and how it came to be. This discussion is hard and scary, at first without answers, but it’s one of the most constructive conversations we could have. And we owe it ourselves to do that.
When we face our hopelessness with the curiosity of understanding it, we get new insight about us and we learn new things about it. Once we understand but more importantly accept it we are more willing to change something. It comes from a better place and it builds a stronger foundation for ourselves. Facing the demons of despair yields healthier results than the elusive idea that having hope alone will make the future better.
Think of despair as a passive state waiting to be understood and hope as a conscious action ready to be performed. Or think of it like you being the parent of two children Hope and Despair. It’s your job to treat them the same way. Think of it any way you like but think of them both next time. Don’t be the kind of parent that names their daughters Hope and… Susan and while attending Hope’s school play, they forget about Susan’s softball game. :)
In closing, I would only add one more thing. Hopes and dreams are nice, but be careful with the expectations you’re setting. If it doesn’t have some strings anchored in reality you’ll find yourself back in the arms of Despair in no-time. Set them accordingly, hope for the best but plan for the worst.