Posted by SLS on February 19, 2012, at 7:32:17
In reply to Re: Hope is a dangerous thing » sleepygirl2, posted by 10derheart on February 13, 2012, at 18:32:29
> I get that, but....
>
> ..wouldn't imagining that things can *never* (= hopelessness) be different make reality feel even worse than that?
>
> I've always found the absence of hope to be dangerous to every aspect of my health...it's as essential to me as meds, therapy, family, faith....Hope has kept me alive for the 3 decades since my first antidepressant trial failed.
I think that hoping for something imagined that cannot ever be is dangerous, not hope itself. It guarantees perpetual disappointment and demoralization. It produces instant hopelessness if one believes that what is imagined is impossible.
Perhaps there are two kinds of hope: sighted and blind. I have always been able to maintain sighted hope because I always saw logical alternatives for addressing my plight. When I ran out of things to see, I lost much of my hope. All I had left was to choose whether to live or die with the pain. I was not prepared to die. So, I had to hope that something beyond my imagination would happen to save me. This is blind hope. I guess blind hope is necessary when one continues to hope for things that they believe can never be. Of course, a belief can be wrong. I try to allow for the existence of uncertainty. In the absence of sighted hope, uncertainty allows for the continuation of blind hope.
But what do I know? These things are what apply to me. They may not apply to anyone else.
- ScottSome see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1010160
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20120127/msgs/1010806.html