Monday musing: Hope

There are a million clichés about hope, and with good reason. Hope shines a light in the dark; lifts us up when we are low; provides the strength to go on when we’re so bone-weary, putting one foot in front of another seems a Herculean task. It brightens our days, lightens our hearts, puts a spring in our step and a smile on our faces.

Hope scares the shit out of me.

I mean it. It’s bloody terrifying stuff. If it’s true that nothing possesses the power of hope to raise our spirits, then it’s also true that nothing else has such destructive potential for the soul, as hope destroyed. Having no positive expectations to begin with isn’t exactly conducive to joy, but entertaining a hope, a dream, only to have it come crashing down around your ears is a truly miserable experience. Devastating.

Of course, without it, we would never achieve anything. What would be the point of making any kind of effort without the hope of success? We would go nowhere, try nothing, love nobody, if we had no hope for these ventures. I think that’s why heartbreak hurts as badly as it does — allowing yourself to fall in love is a special brand of hope all of its own. It’s a hope that depends specifically on another person, and goodness knows how fallible people are. It’s also a hope we invest a huge amount of time and emotion in. We build our lives around it, or we plan to. And, inevitably, it’s a hope that we want to hold onto forever. Other hopes, other dreams, are more short-lived, they occupy smaller parts of our lives, of our hearts. But anyone in love — really, deeply in love — is feeling those feelings with the hope, conscious or otherwise, that they are going to last, reciprocally, forever. A lofty hope indeed. How far we have to fall from its dizzying heights. No wonder we talk about a broken heart; how could it possibly survive such a fall intact?

So yes. Hope scares the shit out of me. Love, too. I’ve been burned often enough by both to understand all too well how they can crush you, probably because I’m someone who throws my whole self so fully into anything that captures my interest or imagination or affection. All abandon, zero caution. I always have been. And I’m not smart enough to learn from my mistakes.

Thank goodness.