YVALIKS

When I was young, I used to own cassettes of ‘folk tales’. One of my favourite story to listen on my little radio was Pandora’s box. If you are not familiar, this is an old Greek mythology tale about how evil entered the world. The Greek gods asked Pandora’s husband to look after a box and the only instruction was to never open it. However, when Pandora’s was left alone with the box, she heard voices coming from it. These voices were evils asking to be released to curse the world. Pandora’s gave in to her curiosity and allow all the evils to flow out over the earth. Another voice called Pandora to be released, and although she initially refused to let it out, the voice claimed to be the voice of ‘Hope’. ‘Hope’ referred to herself as ‘the reason of living’ of humanity. This line always stuck with me as a child. Back then, I couldn’t quite described hope, but I will always says that expression: ‘reason of living’.

Hope is a driving force in human lives.

Hope keeps us going and it can be a strong anchor to help us stay on a specific trajectory.

Yet, we can hope for many things, but some things might not happen. At that moment, we will then meet with what I called one of life’s biggest obstacles:  disappointment. Hope lies in expectations and disappointment is the non-fulfilment of expectations.

I have come to realise that I always find myself surrounded by three types of people:

those who tell me to manage my expectations;

those who tell me to expect nothing to avoid disappointment;

and those who tell me to always hope for the best.

Should I manage my expectation?

In a way, this makes sense. After all, nothing is never guarantee in life. You can hope for many things: love, success, good health, healthy relationship; even while working towards it. However, it might not happened. The contrary of what you hope for might actually happen. The feeling of unhappiness that disappointment causes can be so unhinged. It can lead to discouragement, grief and depression. You will truly believe that you would have been better off if you didn’t hope for anything. I have experienced it firsthand. Disappointment always whisper: ‘you went a bit too ahead of yourself there, shouldn’t have believe that much’. Maybe we shouldn’t believe too much.

But can I avoid disappointment?

Unfortunately, we will all experience disappointment. It can be really small things but also bigger disappointments:

The movie you were excited about turns out to be actually boring;

The new food you ordered at the restaurant brings instant regret;

The trendy dress doesn’t look that flattering on you as it does on your favourite influencer;

The dream job you were yearning for became a nightmare;

The relationship you thought was the one, ended up being one of your biggest heartbreak.

One way or another, you will end up being disappointed in this life, whether you have high expectations or none.

We have no actual guarantees.

So when can I be hopeful?

One group of people that I find fascinating are those who have what I call gigantic hope; take for example lottery players.

The way they hope is wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is the idea to believe for something regardless of the evidence presented to you. Millions of people every day play lottery. They are believing the ‘one in a million chance’ that the numbers they chose on their tickets, are the winning numbers. They are betting against crazy odds. Lottery is purely chance. But they are people who despite constantly losing, keep buying tickets and trying to be the ‘lucky winners’. Surprisingly, there are some ‘lucky winners’ here and there. They defy the odds and manage to be the ‘one in a million’. I do admire the lottery players in a way. I tend to think that if odds are against me, there is no point for me to even start.

Thinking about it, hoping feels like we are playing lottery.

Yes, there ought to be a balance.

We can have gigantic hope, whilst also realising that we have the potential to be disappointed if things doesn’t turn out the way we hope.

We can grieve if it happens.

We can try again in a different way maybe.

We are all walking with scales: hurt and joy are both on each side.

The possibility of hurting is real. The possibility of joy is there too.

We are meant to walk with the scale either way.

We are all playing life lottery.

But sometimes there are beautiful endings when we keep persevering and we do not give up.

We might as well be hopeful; you never know what might happen.