Live with Hope

Another day, my friend exhorted me to have hope. People always tell me to have hope, as if it is important for cancer patients to be hopeful. I told my friend that these are merely false hopes, but she was persistent. I wonder how false hopes of your longevity can help you living better life now. We hope for better salary, better life style, better partners, more happiness, etc. It becomes like a 'Mission' statement in consulting-speak (for the uninitiated: Mission is something you strive for!), something that you strive for but never achieve.
Hope is of little help when there is certainty about death or birth for that matter. It is a disillusion.

Humans are funny animals, we like to believe in things, we think we can actually change the arrangement of world and can predict what can happen in future. Unfortunately it is all a big illusion. Illusion that qualifies as a life style, we hope one day things would be better and in that hope we make our present miserable.

I argue in the favor of pessimism and think that hope is a useless feeling that perpetuates illusion. I have several proof points, I hoped to marry with Aishwarya Rai, never materialized. I hoped to have extramarital affair with Kareena Kapoor, she did not even come and meet me. At one point of time, I even hoped to be the richest man in the world. I can go on, all this proves the point that "hoping" is not really good for you. You can hope for good life all your life and not have any!

Ignoring hope, I trust the "be happy in the moment" life style. It is easier to achieve and heck, lot less to think about. Don't hope, be happy, would be my life style statement. It takes away the disillusion of future, it helps you to see life in a perspective. It lets you appreciate what a miracle life is. It makes you realize that your existence is very fragile, temporary and precious and perhaps needs more attention now than hoping for a future state that, as a matter of fact, will not arrive.

My friend argued that you could never live without hope. In some sense I agree. There is always a hope that Aishwarya may not get along well with Abhishek...