I had a little epiphany as I was driving to work the other day. I was rehashing my views of ‘Hope’. I’d read something a while back about how it should really be considered an evil.

Hope. Pandora brought the jar with the evils and opened it. It was the gods’ gift to man, on the outside a beautiful, enticing gift, called the “lucky jar.” Then all the evils, those lively, winged beings, flew out of it. Since that time, they roam around and do harm to men by day and night. One single evil had not yet slipped out of the jar. As Zeus had wished, Pandora slammed the top down and it remained inside. So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that that jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good–it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

As you can see Nietzsche was a bit of a cynic. Maybe he had a black dog too.

The commonly accepted definition is that hope is the expectation of a positive event or outcome - but it always seemed to me to be just another way of saying ‘wish’. As the saying goes “Wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which one you have more of.” What happens when you hang on to that expectation when all indications point to a negative outcome? It would seem that your suffering will only increase. You ruminate on the future being brighter than your present but then you keep getting hammered by negative events. Each reminder of failure only increases your misery - truly a death by a thousand cuts that only makes the black dog lick its chops.

Let’s say the person you thought was your soul-mate leaves you but you keep hanging on to the thought that they’ll come back. You think that if you only modify your behavior you’ll help bring about this hoped for happy ending - e.g. you turn down dates with friends because you want to be free in case the old flame calls, you reminisce about what you said or did and how next time, you or they will change, etc. With each day comes the painful realization that it’s not going to happen . . . at least not today. So, because you cling to ‘Hope’, you tell yourself maybe it will happen tomorrow, or next week, next month, next year, etc. and you keep modifying your behavior in ways that only serve to paint yourself into an emotional corner.

You become stuck in a painful loop of doing the same thing over & over but expecting different results. Clearly ‘Hope’ is serving no purpose in this scenario.

Enter my little epiphany. Why not use hope when it clearly does serve your interests but abandon it when it doesn’t?

In a previous post I talked about a Dutch man I met years ago named Jack Schwarz, who was a survivor of a concentration camp. Despite near certainty that escape was impossible & death more than likely, Jack and some of his camp mates continuously made plans to escape. Others in the camp gave up and resigned themselves to what they saw as a fate beyond their control or influence.

Despite all evidence indicating a bad outcome, they persevered. Their work towards freedom gave them the necessary tools to survive and maintain a sense of control in a random death environment. Their bodies were imprisoned but not their minds.

This skillful use of ‘hope’ enabled them to see a brighter future (surviving the war) despite evidence they wouldn’t. So how does this differ from clinging to a lover’s return? After all they were modifying & repeating their behavior but getting the same results.

The difference is that their behavior didn’t hurt or limit them. It liberated them. It was a path of action that gave them options were none seemed to exist. Each day they survived was a small success (they were still alive) and a reminder they were closer to the end.

Waiting around for your soul-mate to come to their senses doesn’t aid you in any way. It’s more like putting yourself in a prison. All of your actions only limit and hurt you.

If your car is stuck in the mud why would you choose to keep punching the gas? Hope might tell you that eventually your tires will grab hold of something and you’ll get out, but the reality is you’re only digging in deeper.

The skillful use of hope would be to put something under your tires like a rock or tree limb that might actually enable them to catch and pull your car free. There’s no guarantee that it will work but your chances are greater so there is a reasonable hope for a good outcome.

If you want to win the lottery you have to buy a ticket.

Skillful use of hope must be backed up by positive action of some kind. Merely hoping (wishing) for a good outcome without action is empty.

I’ve struggled with hope for a long time and had rejected it as an ‘evil’ that only brought me more pain. I still found myself yearning for a good outcome to my dilemmas but I was at a loss as to how to get there.

I can’t help but hope that my daughter and I eventually renew our relationship but if I just sit by and ‘Hope’ without taking any positive action the chances aren’t so good. She may well take it as an indication that I don’t care and that her mother’s rantings must be true.

She may come back to our family without any action on my part but I prefer to increase the odds, no matter how little, by taking action. If I continue to send her messages, cards and presents - maybe over time she will want to see and talk to me and the rest of our family again. There’s no guarantee, but it’s a hope I can live with.

All of us hope our black dog will eventually go away. It makes us tired and unmotivated. Remember that the odds are always in the house’s favor and in the Black Dog casino it’s a risky bet to place hoping your depression will lift all by itself. You’re chances of recovery and fewer relapses are much better when you take action.

Let hope spring eternal through the path of action.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 4:19 pm and is filed under hope.