Hope is the idea that you can go forward. It’s actually an instinct.

They say animals don’t deal with things like hope, but observations show otherwise. Their motivations are in a sense more simple than our own, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Hope is an instinct. If we lived solely by our rational minds, then by all rational argument it wouldn’t be possible to deal with being alive. If everything were a cost benefit analysis then the benefit doesn’t justify the cost. Hence the despair when hope is lost. When one is forced to stop and confront that a hoped for things isn’t attainable, it is like tormenting an animal with food. They eventually start ignoring the food.

So hope isn’t just ‘wishing’? No it isn’t. Wishing is whim, and we can have random impulses at any time for no reason at all. Hope is in a sense synonymous with will to live. The idea that when a new day starts there is some reason to still be breathing. Something that you will even be able to do. In the case of a chronic complainer, even the idea that their complaints will be heard is hope as silly as it may seem to the rest of us. When the American President Elect spoke of hope, he wasn’t just using fluffy words. It triggers a real recognition.

What about when the hope never materializes, we still hope? Yes, though the instinct can turn sour and turn against us.

Is the hope divorcing us from reality? Hope is the measure of human resilience, but like an angered emperor scorpion that vigour can be turned against us when frustrated so it gets to be chronic. Even self destructive people hope.

How to stop that frustration from setting in? Know hope for what it is. An inner drive. Don’t equate hope with an object. Hope has proper power when linked to an inner motive. More the movement than the end state. Hope doesn’t frustrate when it is seen as a dynamic. Define what you would do, then give it no object, no deadline. For me, hope motivates my constructive behaviours. I don’t believe I can accomplish something at a specific time, or maybe even at all in my lifetime. But the will to do, it keeps me alive.

It is about hope in the present moment, because it’s when we put hope at a future time that we get frustrated. We don’t know the future, and it is because we don’t that we can try. What do you hope?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~