This postLately I’ve been thinking about hope. We’re taught to hope, to dream big, to believe, and yet on the other hand we’re warned against getting our hopes up. (I’m not talking about religious matters here, but rather hope in the everyday sense.)
An example will help. Every few months I’ll encounter a girl who I think could be perfect for me. Each time I hope beyond hope that she’ll be “the one” (and by that I don’t mean the only girl I could ever marry, but the one who I’m actually going to marry), that this time things will work out, that this barren wasteland of solitude will flourish and blossom into a lush, verdant meadow. Or something like that. :) And every time, so far without fail, it’s failed to go very far. Virtually zero success. And yet each time I keep getting my hopes up.
Now, I’m a dreamer, and I believe very firmly in optimism and grand plans and keeping one’s hope alive. When things like this happen, though, people tell me (or I tell myself) that I oughtn’t get my hopes up, or count my chickens before they hatch, or whatever. On the one hand, life is dreadfully dull when we don’t have dreams and aspirations and ambitions. On the other, it hurts to watch your heart shatter, often in slow-motion instant replay over and over and over again. What’s a man to do?
As for me (and my house :P), I’ve found that to hope is better than not to hope. Not that I particularly like these round-trip tickets to square one, of course, but I’d rather go out with a bang because I opened my heart and dared to hope than with a silent muffle because I was too afraid to believe that it might work out. There’s a Teddy Roosevelt quote on my wall which comes to mind often: “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” It’s become the motto of my life, not just in dating but in every aspect. Would that every man and every woman catapult themselves out of that gray twilight! The world would be a much better place for it.
Granted, mustering up the courage to ask out a girl I rather like is still like summiting Everest, but I can always remind myself to dare mighty things, to dream the impossible dream. “There can be miracles when you believe.”
