(no subject)

[amalthya]

Huge Happy Birthday to delirium6969! It's nice to have you back Stateside.



I feel as though I'm a weird alternate dimension.  This feeling is most likely caused by the fact that I spent the majority of yesterday in bed, sleeping, forgoing all of my plans in lieu of more sleep.  I missed seeing people, and quem98's very brief return. 

James had gotten me watching my Sex & The City season discs again after he had his own mini-marathon.  Despite his being in North Carolina, I've continued to watch through to the end, which I finished last night.

And it got me thinking about hope.  And the perception of hope in today's society.  Has hope because a dirty tool of cynicism?

mindymay's wedding was extraordinarily beautiful this past Saturday.  Outdoors at Strong Mansion, in the heat and beautiful sunshine, Mindy and Steve finally got married. I could understand the pressure she must have felt before being married -- she's the same age that I am and, apart from 4 people, everyone at the wedding was married.  There were also several people who were pregnant or had new infants.

Yet I remember when I met Mindy how unsure a prospect Steve was.  She'd moved back from San Diego to Maryland to give their relationship another go -- they'd broken up, for many of the same reasons that my relationship at the time had ended. No one in San Diego believed that her choice to move back to make things work with Steve was wise -- cynical, they all figured that she was being foolishly hopeful.

I couldn't help feeling smug as I watched Steve dote on Mindy during the reception.  And proud of her for extending herself a little past the comfort line to get what she wanted. 

At the same time, it made me feel sad.  Freedbird and I talked a lot about hope last night -- most people's perceptions of "hope" are bad.  My own mental images vaguely tie it to blind faith, which immediately gets me to skepticism and cynicism.  If you entered a relationship with the hope still existing from a previous one, people would criticize you. Or, precluding the addition of others, staying single with the hope of a relationship would be considered pathetic.

So just how realistic is hope as a concept? Does it stymie realism? Because the possession of hope plays so heavily in fantasy movies, is having hope truly indicative of living in a fantasy?

Comments

[drdelirium.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[rosefox]

I think hope is essential to sanity. Despair is terrible, and pure pragmatism relegates the emotional self to second place. But then, I'm a skeptical optimist. *)

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

So just how realistic is hope as a concept?

You can always have hope.

You just can't always fulfill it.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

Humans are by nature hopeful. If we weren't, we would all give up and die. But there is certainly a difference between hope, delusion, and fantasy. They are all distinct and sometimes intertwined, but not the same. I do not think having hope is indicative of living in a fantasy. You have to have a bit of delusion to be elevated to fantasyland. It's not the hope that creates problems, in my opinion, but rather the harboring of unrealistic expectations. I can be a hopeful pragmatist. Even an optimist doesn't get into too much trouble.