The anatomy of hope
BLAH blog post #1
“Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again”
~ Anne Frank
To quote Cambridge, they define hope as “to want something to happen or to be true, and usually have a good reason to think that it might”. Oxford goes along a similar line of reasoning, defining hope as “a belief that something you want will happen”.
However, hope isn’t just some blind belief or gamble or logical calculated deduction that something in the future will happen. Hope is a driving force, whether it affects us individually or society as a whole. In my opinion, it’s rather flimsy to use such a derogatory way to label hope.
It isn’t just little wishful thinking. Grammatically, you can hope that McDonald’s still has chicken nuggets at 3 am. Even though the sentence structure is correct, wishing and basing it on chance is more suited in describing this “hope”. You can also hope for something more drastic like pursuing the career path you are passionate about.
These two hopes entail the “same” thing. They both boil down to you wanting a desired outcome. However, they are worlds of difference and the severity of both situations are complete polar opposites. What makes the nuggets wishing and the career choice hoping is the key difference of conviction. Your goals and aspirations can and will not magically manifest. You need to reach out, and achieve them, through your own will and drive. That is what it truly means to hope.
As for society and humanity, hope can be viewed as a foundation block or a building stone that keeps us striving for more. The hope for betterment. It can be a big catalyst for development and improvement. In a country’s context, hope can be what we use to support our fellow countrymen and further evolve and learn in the hope of a better life for the future.
Currently, people know better than to blindly hope for the best outcome and fully expect it to come true but if we are all a bit more hopeful, maybe we can fuel ourselves.
~ Celeste Peh (3F/22)