Hope: An Intriguing illusion

It is the nature of hope that can keep you alive or kill you from inside

This one is going to touch some souls. Let’s start. We all need hope at some point in our time. Hope that there is light ahead of this darkness. But, we often confuse hope with the illusion of it. And it is this illusion that can lead to misery. Such illusions often arise from greed, insecurities, and fear. False hope is often linked to cowardness and it is partially true. People who often lack the ability to accept the truth fall prey to illusions. Before we get into the dark side of this topic. Let’s explore the bright side.

Bright Side

Hope is a really powerful emotion. It is what has helped humanity survive for so long on the planet. When you have hope of survival your body and mind go beyond their respective capabilities to turn the hope into reality. And if you don’t have hope you are likely to die even early. Think for a second if you don’t have any hope of getting your life together and having a brighter future why would you go through all this misery in the first place? That’s what causes suicide. People who lose hope of better circumstances in life often end up committing suicide. But, what hope is actually, and how does this feeling arise in one’s emotional world?

Hope is in fact an illusion that your mind creates based on some events that would act as a proof of concept. Your mind creates this illusion so you can survive in times of crisis. For example, In winter when you get chills and have no clothes you give yourself hope to get through the night for a warm sunny morning. Hope can also be influenced by your thoughts and actions. In fact, you can hack the hope mechanism and create on-demand hope. That’s what highly successful men do to keep them moving when everyone else is lost. More on emotion control later

Dark Side

The dark side of hope is when you create it in a situation where it should not exist. Most often it arises from greed. Like you put in all your money into a stock being overly optimistic and end up losing all the capital. Then there is hope that arises from insecurity. Common example relationships you might end up staying in a toxic relationship because you fear you can’t handle the pain of losing the love of your life so, you hope he/she will change with time. Another common example is one-sided love. You stay close to them in the hope that one day god one day he/she will be mine.

Now such hopes can literally make your life a living hell. The solution to that is to have courage enough to walk away from anything that doesn’t value you enough, don’t be too greedy to put all your money into one basket without proper proof of concept. Greed can be good but playing your cards blindly will destroy you.