Hope v. Faith

A big deal is often made of hope, most­ly pos­i­tive, Pan­do­ra’s Box con­tained hope, to assuage the mis­eries it released. The Matrix: Reloaded even makes a point about it. Hope appar­ent­ly is a sav­ing grace, some­thing that keeps us humans dream­ing.

I don’t see it that way, to me, hope is some­thing of a wolf in sheep­’s cloth­ing.

Hope offers no guar­an­tees, just pos­si­bil­i­ties. These pos­si­bil­i­ties may or may not actu­al­ly reach fruition. Thus, the rea­son we hope for them. So hope con­tains a fun­da­men­tal uncer­tain­ty that we choose to ignore.

ex: I hope she likes me.

Now, she may or may not like me, I do not know, but I real­ly want it to be true. Although this is what I want, I still rec­og­nize that it might not hap­pen despite stuff­ing this knowl­edge deep down. Thus spawn­ing the child of hope, anx­i­ety.

Faith, on the oth­er hand, is much more secure. True faith is unshake­able, because although it might be a ref­er­ent to the same pos­si­bil­i­ties that can be hoped for, there is no room for doubt. It is some­thing believed, not a pos­si­bil­i­ty believed.

ex: I believe that she likes me.

Still, she may or may not like me, but I know that she does. I am secure in this belief. I am blind to the fact that I may be wrong, but at least the anx­i­ety is nowhere to be found.

It is a shame I am a hope­ful per­son instead of a hope­less one. Anx­i­ety is nev­er a good thing.