I don't know why, but I just started thinking about that word. Hope obviously means to have a strong desire for something; to really want this situation to go my way. Is it, like the word love, overused to the point where it's lost its true meaning? For instance, the greeks had EROS or passionate, romantic love, PHILIA or love between friends and spouses. Then there's AGAPE with is the truest, most pure love. Love between Christ and mankind. There are more words the Greeks had for the different types of love. But we in the English language took all those different words and use one: Love. I love my dog, I love my spouse, I love my sibling, I love rock music, I love that book. The same word describing many different feelings to many different objects.
This is my own philosophical mind wandering (and I don't consider myself a good philosopher) but can the same hold true for hope or ELPIDA? Through my research of the Greek origin of hope I found only one word. But the problem I see with it is our usage of it. I hope I do well on my math test vs. I hope my cancer-stricken family member survives. Same verb, but vastly different contexts. I don't think that we mean hope in the math test sense the same as in the cancer one. Just like we don't mean love in the same way as a book vs our family.
The New Living Translation of 1 Corinthians 13:13 tells us that "three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love." Hope will last forever. I agree. Athiest Friedrich Nietzsche says "Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man." Hope is bad. I disagree with Nietzsche, but I understand his view. For example, a prisoner of war who hopes that he will one day be saved. But day after day he is tortured to give up information. He does not want to betray his country, but if he gives the information, he will no longer be tortured - just killed on the spot. So he hopes that his is soon saved. Hope is prolonging his torment and torture.
Another way I can understand Nietzsche's view is in free will. Do we truly have free will if God has a plan laid out for us? And if he does have a plan, are we just wasting our time hoping for what we desire, instead of having faith in our maker? These are questions that no one has the answer too. We just speculate and debate based on our views of religion.
But if your answer to the second question is "yes" then I think you would agree with Nietzsche's quote. But I disagree with Nietzsche because I think hope is good. Hope is optimism, it prevents us from giving up. Hope keeps us hanging on in the toughest of times; the hope for something better keeps pushing us. While fiction, the Shawshank Redemption is a great example of never giving up hope. If you haven't seen the movie, I suggest you watch it. There is a reason that hope exists; there is a reason for everything. It's our job to just accept that and have faith. I have a friend who's going through a rough patch right now. This rough patch is another drop in a super long roller coaster he's been riding all year.
It's not my place to speculate the causes of these feelings. But I'm there as a friend offering advice, to him and to all: Don't give up hope, EVER!
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." - Andy Dufresne (The Shawshank Redemption)
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