The Meaning of Hope and Its Role in Our Life

Hope is a word that tends to get thrown around a lot. You might hope they’re serving pizza at lunch or hope you pass your math test, but true hope is less superficial. True hope is when every atom in your body is eagerly anticipating something. True hope can sometimes only be felt when you’re in a horrible situation. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes the worst of times to bring the best of feelings out of people. To completely understand hope you must first know what it is. According to dictionary.com, hope is “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.” Hope is a very important human feeling. Without hope, morale would be low everywhere. People would just give up and live unhappy lives. Imagine living a hopeless life. Imagine the sorrow you would feel every day. Hope is what keeps life from growing miserable. Think of the worst situations you could be in throughout human history. A German Jew during the Holocaust, a New York City firefighter on 9/11, a student while their school is being shot up. On the surface these events seem pretty hopeless, but some of the strongest feelings of hope in history have originated from these events.

After the Parkland school shooting students across the country joined together to create change and brought feelings of hopefulness that catastrophic events like the one that occurred in Parkland could be prevented in the future. Following Hurricane Katrina New Orleans residents had hope that they could take their previously peaceful lives back from the floodwaters that ravaged their city. Even in times of war humans have had hope that the fighting would stop and everyone would be kind to each other once more. Hope is ingrained in human DNA the same way it is a permanent fixture in cheesy get well soon cards from Hallmark. It is a natural, important human emotion. Without hope we would all be zombies, mindlessly going about our lives and never changing anything because we wouldn’t have the will to hope for anything more than our meager existence.

Helen Keller said that “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” Hope achieves the impossible in that even in the worst of times, even when there is no way out, even when you can’t go on for any longer, you hope that everything will be okay. You hope that you can succeed. Hope achieves the impossible task of motivating someone who is beyond the point of motivation. Hope is always present whether you realize it or not, and you should be glad. There is no shame in wishing for something more, hoping for the best possible scenario to occur. Hope forces your humanity to take center stage, and what’s so unappealing about appearing humane? Human evolution has resulted in many traits being left behind over the years, but hope has always been there. You might as well acknowledge its presence.