pessimistic christina again
In my senior yearbook, a guy (who used to be a good friend, and has now evolved into "just some guy I went to high school with") signed with the quote, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good things never die." (The Shawshank Redemption, I believe, although it may be somewhat paraphrased and that damn double negative always
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I won't say the usual stuff about how it'll get better; on what authority could I possibly assert that?
Hope always seemed to me to be tied to justice, fairness, to some universal karmic mechanism for reward and punishment, based on behavior. Hope is the idea that not only is there Something noticing, but that It both cares about and agrees with the one that hopes. Hope is hubris, and presumption--the righteous conviction that one's assessments match those of Whatever flips the switches, and that one's outcomes make some difference to It.
The act of hoping is more than the desire for some future outcome. Hope, by its nature, implies that the desire outcome is somehow deserved. There is no shortage of tragedy and injustice in the world, in our country, in our community. It seems unlikely that all those who suffer somehow deserve misery, or that all those who prosper do so because of virtue. Is that simple fact not enough to impeach this notion of "hope"?
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