The light that sparks

what is hope?

Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen. It is more than just a state of mind, a feeling of optimism, a thought that says things will improve, it won’t always bleak, there’s a way to rise above the present circumstances. Hope is an internal awareness that you do not have to suffer forever, and that somehow, somewhere there is a remedy for despair that you will come upon if you only maintain this expectancy in your heart. We are always in need of 3 things in order to build and maintain hope: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something and a community.

Is hope good or bad?

When we talk about hope there is always a question that may come to the mind and that is; is hope good or bad? Wellmost of us would think it is good and most would say a big no to it but Hope is not inherently good or inherently bad; it is what we do with it. If we spend our days and lives living only in hope of something else then it becomes bad – we feel pain when the real world doesn’t meet our lofty, our aim. We are always in hope, in desire of something good to happen but then it is mostly the opposite that happens. This is mainly because we don’t try hard for it to happen and once the circumstances become worse we start to blame the almighty Allah for it. We tend to get too overdramatic over certain situations and we are the only ones to blame for this. You see, we have a feeling brain and a thinking brain where the thinking brain is always bullied and abused by the feeling brain. But why is this? Why not the other way round?

The consciousness car

Take a car for example. we will call it the “consciousness car”. Your thinking brain is in the passenger seat telling your feeling brain which routes to take and on which directions to turn. But every now and then they are having small conflicts mainly because the thinking brain is logical and your feeling brain does anything it feels like doing without keeping the consequences in mind. Now the thinking brain tries his best to give logical reasons but the feeling brain still doesn’t accept. Now here is the main point the thinking brain thinks he is the hero controlling everything but the feeling brain is the one who drives the consciousness car because, ultimately, we are moved to action only by emotion. That’s because action is emotion. Emotion is the biological hydraulic system that pushes our bodies into movement. Fear is not this magical thing your brain invents. No, it happens in our bodies. It’s the tightening of your stomach, the tensing of your muscles, the release of adrenaline, the overwhelming desire for space and emptiness around your body. While the thinking brain exists solely within the synaptic arrangements inside your skull, the feeling brain is the wisdom and stupidity of the entire body. Anger pushes your body to move. Anxiety pulls it into retreat. Joy lights up the facial muscles, while sadness attempts to shade your existence from view. Emotion inspires action, and action inspires emotion. The two are inseparable. Now this leads to the most obvious answer of our question; why don’t we do things we know we should do?

Because we don’t feel like it!

What is the importance of hope in life?

Now as you may have read about hope, a question may arise in your mind; what is the importance of hope in life? Hope reduces feelings of helplessness, increases happiness, reduces stress, and improves our quality of life. It helps us to ignore the sufferings of the present. When we stay positive about our future, and feel that we have to fight to win the problems, our probability to succeed increases. It happens because we fight trying to stay mentally strong and give our best efforts. This is why the ancestors always say ‘hope for the best and prepare for the worst’. When we have hope for something to happen we mentally and physically tend to become stronger and ready for the worst to happen and this why people who hope mostly succeed.

Hope is belief