Is it just a sick joke?

Hope….

In another forum someone wrote a post about having hope, and I wish them all the best, I really do.

But I have a question that I don’t have an answer for.

What is hope?

I know what it says in the dictionary, but those are just words, empty words at that.

Is that all hope is, any empty word, what a sick joke on all of us if it is, and if it is something more, could someone explain it to me?

I believe Hope is very basic and elemental. We all have an instinct for survival. I think that is hope. It is what makes us even try to get up in the morning or to get the promotion...survival and hope. Hope is not an empty word; it is what makes you ask the question and what makes me try to answer it. We have an infinite supply of it and it is always there, even when things look dark. Been there and yes, some days it's hard to find, but it's always there.

Mike, My Friend...that is some deep thinking! WOW! You're really on to something here, I think

I agree with TheSeeker - I think we all do have an instinct for survival, however well hidden it is, which fosters a little germ of hope that pushes us to seek help, phone helplines, post on forums like this. Not easy to hang on to, though, and it doesn't answer the bigger questions about what the point of it all is - but hopefully (ha) it helps us face each new day. Reminds me a little of this poem:

Days
by Philip Larkin

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

I really don't know if I could pinpoint and define it. But I have felt it. I also fear that it is a sick joke, a creul trick. I guess someday we'll know...

i understand how you feel. i really agree with the seeker. hope is as basic and as much of a necessity as anything else we have been given to survive. without hope there is nothing. hoping that tommorrow will be better is what keeps alot of us on this planet. its invisible and intangible but its real.

Oh Mike....

Hope: The look in a parent's eyes as their child walks across the stage at their high school graduation.

Hope: A simple grin on a kid's face that says "I can conquer the world!"

Hope: Grabbing your wallet to pay for your dinner at a restaurant when the water comes and says "Oh, someone already paid for your tab sir...."

Hope: Helping an elderly lady load her car with groceries

Hope: The doctor coming in after surgery "Well, it was a long shot, but he's going to pull through."

Hope: My mom telling me everyday that I will get a job....

Hope: Just ONE person saying NO the pills, the bottle, the blade...

Hope: A kid realizing this world really is something....

lets all think more like children....HOPE is all around you Mike. HOPE is that tiny light inside each of us, that shines dimmer the more we ignore it...HOPE is like your faith...believe

What is hope? According to Thomas Aquinas, hope takes as its object "a future good, difficult but possible to obtain." Fundamentally, then, hope is a way of relating to the future, a way of moving beyond and transcending the limitations, the darkness, the injustice of the present day. But it is a particular way of doing so.

First, hope is not to be equated with a sunny, cockeyed optimism. Hope does not pertain to easy or certain things, no matter how good they may seem and how much we miss them right now. Hope is tough: Hope knows there are difficulties and realizes what it will cost to deal with them.

Second, precisely because hope deals with difficulties, it requires hard work. The process of pursuing the object of hope is arduous. Hope demands engagement, not just bare acquiescence. And in fact, hope enables action in difficult times. We do not embark upon a difficult course of action unless we have the hope that we will succeed.

Third, hope is not solitary. The fulfillment of hope frequently requires activity or assistance from others. Think of those trapped by Hurricane Katrina, hoping for safety, depending for safety upon the rescuers coming in time. Furthermore, hope can be for the good of someone else - provided that we are united to them in love and so will their good as our own. By expanding our hearts in love, we also expand the scope for our hope.

Fourth, while the object hoped for has to be in the future, not the past or the present, it does not have to be achieved at any specified or certain date. We cannot always know when what we seek is achievable.

Cultivating hope has always required us to provide one another with practical assistance in our respective distress - the fruits of our hearts, hands, minds and of our imagination. Practical imagination is a collective project, a fundamental act of human solidarity.

So, it seems, hope is both subjective and objective. The belief that we have the capacity to change keeps the darkness of despair at bay. Objectivity is the product of empiricism. Experiencing positive change fuels the view that we are not helpless drudges that life happens to.

Believe and give life the effort it requires.

Be well.

(Adapted from a larger article.)

You got me thinking, Mike. This post stayed with me and I was mulling it over and I thought "Hope is the light you cling to in the darkness, so you are never in the dark."

I therefore concluded that depression effectively strangles hope.

Thanks for that article, Byz. That was beautiful.

((((Mike_J))))

Thank you for your post and for asking the question. I think I used to believe that hope did not exist and that it was one of those words that just did not apply to me. I could not see any hope or any way for hope to be a possibilty. But for me now, hope is something that I feel I can have if I am willing to do what it takes to help myself and to be willing to do the hard stuff to get to where it is I need or want to go.

Hope is not something to me that you can really experience unless you are looking for way to get there. How can you have hope if you do not really want to move from one place to another. Someone else cannot achieve that hope for you for unless it is something that you yourself want to believe for how can anyone do that for you?

Finding that hope sometimes can be seen in what others have or what others believe. I know that there have been many times that my t or friend has said that they would carry that hope for me until I was able to carry it for myself. That meant something and it gave me something to at least see and work towards.

Finding that hope is not easy especially when you are not in the place that you can see any. When things are so dark that it is all you can do to see before your eyes even a small dim light to find your way, hope is not exactly something you cling to. But then sometimes hope is all you have to cling to.

I know that sometimes I feel myself just hope that someone can hear me somewhere in what I write or say that will give then an inkling that I am here and they will hear. Three years ago, I had lost hope and wanted out. But also in that loss of hope, somehow I took one more chance in hopes that someone would hear what I was saying and that somehow I would be able to connect somewhere to be able to somehow feel it was okay to go on.

Is that hope? Maybe in a way, as if I did not have the littlest thought of hope that someone would hear then I would not have tried or taken the chance to reach out. I would have just did what I was planning and no one would have known anything different. So maybe hope is the very thing that brings us to reach for the first time or maybe for that last time somehow, somewhere believing enough to take one more chance to be heard.

I think hope exists until that final breathe when we stop reaching or trying. I don't know just my thoughts. All I know if if I did not have some kind of hope I would not be here right now.

dps

What wonderful replies! Katileena,Byzantine,DarkPurpleSecrets!!! I was kinda waffling there--thinking--well-for me
Hope and faith go hand in hand, they are one I see no difference betwixt the two.

My Faith that, at any given time things will change and go as they should (perhaps not as I planned), but for my best good is my bedrock of constant Hope.

It is my way out of stinkin thinkin-which is a strangler, as thine self untrue stated.

Great Thread--Thanks all!!!