You Deserve Better Than Hope

Hope implies that we have a chance, even a small one, of getting what we hope for.

Hope is a funny construct - it can pull people out of the pits of despair, giving them the power to survive and succeed, but when dashed it can shatter a soul.

Hope is a passive, yet passionate, state.

Hope does not lead to action. In many cases it is a substitute for action.

Hope is somewhat optimistic, and largely dangerous.

If you're emotionally vulnerable and have a desire for a better turn of events, I don't think hope is the best way to go. Yes, there is a chance that things will turn out as you hope they will. But only a chance.

Because hope doesn't do the work, and for a depressed person it just becomes an excuse.

"Nothing ever goes right for me. I should just give up."

If I hope to win the lottery and don't buy a ticket, whose fault is that? That one might be too obvious. If I apply for a job, and hope I get it, but I never call to follow up on the application, whose fault is that? The hiring manager's? Mine, maybe?

It's really easy to be passive about life when you've got the thousand-pound weight of depression on your soul. You hope for good things to happen, but you expect those hopes to be dashed. When they are, you can easily confirm your suspicion that your life sucks, your luck is terrible, the Universe is against you, and you smell funny.

Okay, that last one is just your imagination, unless you have another issue.

But actually that last one is just like the rest of them - they're all things that you can change, but only when you stop being passive about them!

Hope is a dream killer. Sure, sometimes things work out as we hoped they would. But then we are robbed of the satisfaction of accomplishing them, because they just . . . happened. And if those good things didn't happen through our actions, then we have not learned how to make them happen again. Dreams that come true through the random action of the Universe don't turn into phenomenal stories of personal transformation any more often than single-celled organisms evolve into sentient primates with language and culture.

I'll let you look up the odds on that for yourself.

If you feel the need to hope for an outcome, do yourself a favor and find out what it would take to get yourself there. Does it seem too big a goal? No worries. Find a smaller goal, one that you can achieve, that will move you closer. Is your goal to be free of depression? Maybe the best goal you can achieve for yourself is calling a counseling center. Doesn't seem like much, but if you make that call, you have taken action. You are teaching yourself that you refuse to allow yourself to drift aimlessly through life. You are empowered to make decisions that will affect your fate.

Personal responsibility is washed away by hope; hoping absolves us the obligation for our own lives.

Don't let depression suck you down into that hole where you believe all that claptrap about not having power. You do. And you can start using it as soon as you realize that there are much better tools out there than hope.