On Hope And Other Bad Ideas

[crainefish]

Samcallahan lent me Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart".  She's got a chapter on  hope in it.  Says hope is actually not such a great thing, and hopelessness is the better way to go.  Sensei said something similar - that if you hope, you're already trying to plan the future - and that's just ain't never going to happen.  And robbing yourself of

Comments

[fuzzyscribble]

Crap happens. But you can sometimes avoid stepping in it

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[lordcat]

I find that 'hope' is a necessity... I don't think of it as 'planning for the future', but being 'optimistic for the future'... I'll agree that 'action' speaks louder than 'hope', but when there's no 'action' that you can take, that leaves you with just 'hope

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[samcallahan]

I feel that hope and optimism are confused in your response. Hope, to me, denotes an attachment to a certain potential future. And when the future doesn't come as you planned (which of course it won't), you'll be unhappy about it.
I don't agree with you examples, either. If you ask someone out, or apply for an important job, and you care deeply about the outcome, it often translates to a counterproductive sort of desperation. If you enter the same situation with a desired outcome, but without attachment to it, you'll ofen do better.

YMMV...

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[crainefish]

I guess I meant both hope and optimism. If you give up expectation (hope), you give up believing that things will turn out for the best (optimism). No?

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[crainefish]

You give up pessimism in the process, too - so it's not a one way street...