Hope Floats

Sep 12th, 2009 3:19:00pm

Expectations are strange things. They are those ideas you have formed in your head about what a certain someone or something or someplace might be like, before having seen the real thing. I call them strange because our assumptions are usually nothing compared to reality, and yet we constantly make them despite how many times we have been either pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised.

Case in point. A relative of mine, one whom I have not seen in more than a decade, came to visit last night. Now, I am not one of many words – not in person, at any rate – and couple that with the awkwardness one feels after ten odd years apart, you may have rightly mistaken me for a mute. It was apparent I was not what he expected. I do believe he thought I would still be the same chatterbox I used to be, and that we would have many a glorious conversation talking about this or that as of old. Sadly not the case, as guilty as that made me, and his notions of renewing the close relationship we once had were dashed to pieces.

So why do we continue to suppose, presume and conjecture? Why do we continue to hope things will turn out the way we’ve imagined them to in our minds? After all, an expectation is a form of hope. So why do we do it? We are let down time and time again, with occasional reward, but still we hope.

The way I see it, it’s basically because we are only human. We need something to look forward to, something to keep our spirits alive and afloat when the rest of the world keeps pulling them down. When you have lost hope, you have lost any will to keep fighting, no matter what battle it is. It is that light at the end of the tunnel that everyone of us, however you may deny it, keep moving towards. It’s what keeps us going. Even the most cynical of people dare to do it sometimes. They’ll deny it when you ask, I promise you, but they do. It can’t be helped. It’s a part of all of us, this thing, our little whisperer that says maybe this time things won’t be so bad; this time things’ll turn out okay.

So when we make those assumptions, have those fantasies and raise our expectations, it’s because we hope that sometime soon, we won’t be disappointed, regardless of how many times we have been before.