Hope

Some friends and I are going to read The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama together. It's an effort to make our book club more than just a neat idea. We'll see how it goes. We're not really sure how it's going to work, which may be why we've never read anything together although we technically started this over a year ago.

I like the title. "Hope" is a loaded word for me, though, so in the face of reading this book I thought I'd articulate some of my feelings towards that concept. (Good morning, pessimism.)

I think that hope is dangerous. I think that's one of my mottos. And I don't mean good dangerous. When you hope, you have the strong possibility of being crushed. Your heart gets set on a particular positive outcome, and the discouragement and disillusionment that come when the object of your hope are not forthcoming make you worse off than you were before. Also, naivety often disguises itself as hope, and once you learn this you cannot help but be suspicious.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick...
...Proverbs 13:12...

I am well acquainted with the sickness of heart that arises from dashed hopes. With low expectations, I am less likely to be disappointed. I am more able to make what I can out of my current circumstances instead of grasping for things outside my reach. I can exchange desperation for peace. It seems better this way.