Why do I have hope when there isn't any?

Question

Even in this darkness I dream of sunshine.. is it human instinct to hope for the best even though in reality that may never happen.. why do I feel this enormose hope when not a single trace of light I can see... can this hope be your end? coz this hope is suffocating me ever and ever more...

Answer 1

I think that YOU are optimistic, by nature.

IMHO people are either born optimists or pessimists. You are an Optimist, this will make you less likely to ever suffer from depression!

I hope that sunshine will fill your cloudy day, whatever your problem is!

Answer 2

Its simple - you are lucky. Many people don't have your qualities in this respect and spend their entire lives in quiet desperation. Obviously, you recognize life's difficulties, yet manage to stay hopefully in spite of the fact. You may be right that this instinctual. That makes sense because hope improves the chances of survival.
I wonder if the human condition was analysed dispassionately by a super computer, what its conclusions would be. I suspect that it's outlook what not be as positive as that of a person with hope. Hope is irrational and irrationality is a human trait that is one of the things that makes the human race so remarkable and at the same time infuriating.
Hope is only a bad thing when coupled with futile inaction. You have to use hope to motivate yourself to create change such that the need for hope evaporates.

Answer 3

To hope is to experience unhappiness and discontentment. Learn to enjoy the dark day and you will feel much better. If you are always longing for the sunshine, you will be unhappy every time the sun takes cover.

Make a decision to find something positive about the dark day and then sunshine or darkness will both be a source of pleasure.

Answer 4

There is an intriguing quote from Dante - an inscription over the gate to the underworld if memory serves me correctly, "Give up hope all ye who enter here."

Hope is a kind of glue that binds us to our learned egoic self which is always conflicted and easily despairs.

Another thing to consider is that epiphanies, creative leaps and similar experiences occur after hope is gone for certain and the ego - at least temporarily - disappears.

Our learned illusions about self and the world perpetuate the past reality. It may be mere delusion but it is painful if you don't question the validity of your illusions.

Answer 5

The question posed here, namely, "what is the proper ground of hope?" is actually a philosophical question of the highest order. The religious philosopher Gabriel Marcel has written that "Hope appears precisely when hope is lost..." Marcel's point is very similar to your own--we only begin to ask after Hope itself, the "phenomenology of hope" if you will, when hope becomes disarticulated from some natural object.

It has been said that all hope is hope for happiness. For the dogmatically religious thinker, the "structure" behind all petty hoping for this or that is a kind of absolute hope, the hope of the finite being, the creature, for an ultimate destination. Hope is the concern that a created being has for the destination of its immortal soul.

For modern persons, however, for whom moral imperatives arise out of the condition of our rational autonomy, the investiture of hope with a "big H" has for the most part come to lie with the hope for the just society, since a just society is the utopia in which the majority of people can have the largest measure of human happiness. In the 19th century, the moralist's idea of the just society (the kingdom of ends as an ideal for regulating conduct under less than perfect institutional conditions) gave way before projects of social and political emancipation. One could argue (as indeed many did) that the just society as the proper object of Hope was a torch that passed to the Marxist narrative of the movement of history, through revolution, to the attainment of the classless society. Putting aside all other challenges to this status, this standpoint came to an end along with theoretical Marxism in 1989 along with the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. We seem to be left with no counter-balance to Weber's iron cage.

One could argue that since this sequence of events, the (secular) modern world has lacked a determinate locus for Hope. Nobody believes in grand narratives about how we are going to bring about a just society through increasing progress in human nature and the rationalization of our institutions. In this period, the question of the ground of Hope lights up for the society just as it does for the individual (who asks why do I continue to have Hope even when there isn't any).

In this last cryptic paragraph, I propose a (transcendental) answer. Hope is actually the demand of pure reason for the highest possible unity and completeness in the sphere of the practical (moral). Put another way, the ground of Hope is hopelessness. Rational creatures such as ourselves generate Hope as a demand--because Hope is a requirement for moral motivation and conduct.

Answer 6

Do you you think darkness is dangerous? Sometime it is the best place to play. You know the saying 'hope dies last'. Moreover, etymologically, 'hope' comes from O.E. hopian "wish, expect, look forward (to something)," and some suggest a connection with hop (v.) on the notion of "leaping in expectation."

If hope is suffocating you, try to fight it, try to kill it and see if you feel despair. Quite a nice feeling, constructive I'd say.

Answer 7

Why do you hope? The same reason the rest of the world does. In this life, there will be disappointment after disappointment. Hope is the one little strand that keeps us hanging on day after day. Expecting failure is just expecting fail. Who wants to expect to fail? Hope is the one thing that takes us away from the failure we are about to experience. Hope is happiness and sadness all in one. But there is no happiness without it, instead sadness would be all we found

Answer 8

there is always reason for hope, even if the situation currently in focus does not work out the way you wish it to, there will be something else, hope and dreams often can overcome the current reality, i use the word current, and emphasis it, as that to a great extent, to me, is what life is, whether good or bad, what is today might not be tomorrow, but each day we learn to learn, to grow, to move on, living life is what life is about

Answer 9

Hope leaves you clinging on to life, even if it could lead to disappointment. One day, you'll discover the light, just maybe in a new direction than what you've been used to following.

Answer 10

Ben Franklin was quoted as saying the optimists looked on the bright side and were often disappointed whereas a pessimists looked on the dark side and were often delightfully surprised