Maybe It Isn’t So Bad After All

We’re living our life looking for something to believe in.

We’re always captivated by the idea of hope. It gives us a taste of life, they said. The same feeling when you just finished reading a whole series of Harry Potter or even after watching some sit-coms like Friends. It’s always that moment where we wish our life is nearly half as magical, as adventurous, or as fun as those narratives. Hope is a double-edged knife. The more excitement it gives us, the more we know it’s all just an idea that nobody knows how it will turn out at the end.

Another bitter truth about hope is that it points out some missing parts in us.

You fall in love with your best friend and hope that things work out like Alex & Rosie, although deep down you know she/he is perfectly happy with her/his significant other. You still wish to hop on a plane, going to Zermatt or getting on the Trans-Mongolian train someday, although deep down you can never define ‘someday’. We’ve always known it damn well that most likely the chance is slim yet the hope is still there, it’s always been there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a believer myself since like forever. I’m sold to some random hopelessly romantic stories, or some motivational life-changing books. But I also hate the fact that I’m conscious enough of things that I can never be or have for the rest of my life. So, why not have a simpler approach to this matter?

I’d like to start by accepting the fact that hope is something humane and that’s okay.

I’ve been in a point where I was very disappointed by things that didn’t turn out the way I hoped. I was bitter over many things in life and I lived my life rejecting the idea of hope, even the slightest ones. So I really hated myself whenever I knew I was going to hope for something and lived my life in constant denial. But then again, no matter how I refused to hope for something, it always happened naturally after all. So I gave up denying it.

Our life consists of little hopes and wishes along the way. But it doesn’t change the fact that life is also a bummer sometimes (well, a lot, actually). People are longing for that happy ending where hopes are turning into reality.

But life doesn’t end at the point where the couple get married, drive to the sunset, and live happily ever after.

There are days of screaming & crying and it’s always full of irony where it gets to the point that it’s no longer ironic at all. Like those little moments in that one song, Ironic by Alanis Morissette,

It’s a traffic jam when you’re already late. A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break. It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. It’s meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife.

Putting myself in between of everything gives me the ability to comprehend that life is multi-dimensional and full of contradiction. If having hopes is somewhat keeping you alive or simply makes you see reality even clearer, maybe it isn’t so bad after all.