Hope

Hope is a funny thing.  A wish that things will happen to improve the situation.

The spiritual practitioners of the East regard desire, a wish, wanting, as the enemy of happiness.  The root of all unhappiness is the wish that things were not as they are.

The religious of the West regard hope as the essential core of their beliefs.  Without the hope of eternal life in the bliss of Heaven religion would basically boil down to a set of moral rules and a statement about how the universe started.

Optimistic people have been shown to be happier and more successful in all sorts of facets of life, from career to relationships.  It seems to me that optimistic people are those with an attitude of non-specific hope.

People also greatly over-estimate the effects of a changing environment on their happiness.  Over time there is a truly amazing return to a sort of standard amount of happiness for people.  Win the lottery and in a year you will probably be no happier than you are now.  Become paralyzed in a car accident and in a year you will probably be no less happy than you are now.  This makes sense evolutionarily because the survival and reproductive rates of the depressed and blissfully happy are substantially reduced.  There are only two solid ways to improve happiness; having close, positive relationships with friends and relations, and through altering the internal aspects of our experience, changing the brain.

Hope then, is a mixed bag.  Hope seems to be generally a good thing, as long as it isn't dashed, and as long as it doesn't preclude appreciating what is going on now.  Ideally one should have a clear head about one's present situation, appreciating the good things and not dwelling on the bad.  A general feeling that things are all right and will probably get better.  Hope for specific things is more dangerous, and so should be confined to those things for which there is a good chance that it will happen, and for those things that are not disasters should they not happen.

At the moment I am hopeful.  I think there is a better than 50% chance of a change in my environment that I believe will make life better for me.  However, I am trying to "do hope" in the best possible manner.  I am concentrating to an extent on there really not being much wrong with my present situation.  I am not expecting the changes to happen, I will be pleased if they do.  I do not expect these changes to "fix" everything in my life.  I am trying to create an internal environment in which there can be no bad outcome, only differing amounts of good outcomes.

Finally I have a strange, irrational attitude with regard to this hope.  I have the idea that if I tell people about what I am hoping to happen, it won't happen.  There is a part of me believing in a jinx.  There is another part of me that knows that is nonsense.  Still, I haven't told you, have I?