The Thing with Feathers

I’ve been thinking about hope. It won Barack Obama the presidency in the famous posters, because it was so attractive a concept to so many people. It’s what we do when all else seems impossible; we hope, even when all evidence to the contrary would have us give up.

I have a Buddhist friend who believes that hope is a major source of suffering in her life, because of its corollary, disappointment. If she could somehow stop hoping for certain outcomes, she could avoid the disappointment that so often follows. She’s doing it to herself, she reasons. But she can’t turn it off so easily and it continues, the hoping and the letdown in a cycle that leaves her wrung out and sad.

It’s because we live by imagining the future, telling ourselves stories about this possibility or that one. I believe it’s what keeps us alive even in the face of loss, horror, destruction and failure. It causes us distress when our hopes are dashed, but the hoping itself held out the possibility of the granting of our wishes, of a world gone right, of things working out for the better.

I think I tend to temper my hope against what I see as realism, as if to spare myself the disappointment. It’s as if I went all in and hoped fervently I would crash just as dramatically, so if I can hold back my fantasies I can control the negative emotions that come with setbacks. But what if I just allowed myself to luxuriate in hope in the first place? Would I necessarily feel the equivalent amount of disappointment? Possibly I’d just have had a pleasant fantasy followed by the same amount of grief I would have felt anyway, and I wouldn’t have had to admonish myself for hoping so profusely. I would have the good part of the story, even if it was only in my head. So next time I buy a lottery ticket or apply for a job, or hope for a Democrat in the White House with Democratic House and Senate, I think I’ll allow myself to go down that road of extravagant hoping, just to give myself the happiness of that indulgence in the story. I’ll live emotionally and all in. Maybe it’s foolish, but somehow I feel like it’ll turn out all right.