Hope.... is it one of the most powerful words in the English language?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yeah, I think we need to be sure we're drawing a line between hoping and wishing.

[CutterMike]

I understand that to sit at home and just hope for everything, it's destructive.

But, a life without hope..... sheesh! CutterMike, your example is very depressing. Sure, the world has evils, despair, destructive forces beyond our control, but if we do not work towards and hope for a better future for ourselves and those we love, then what's the point?

Don't get me wrong -- I think that hope can be BOTH our greatest glory and our worst nightmare. You cannot have hope , I think, without a consciousness of time. A dog doesn't hope for liver for dinner tonight -- he doesn't THINK about dinner until he gets hungry, and his issue is whether or not there is food in his dish when he IS hungry. What, particularly, MIGHT be there when he gets hungry later is not a thought that, I believe, enters his mind. Humans know time and can anticipate good things or evil ones. Hope, essentially, allows us to imagine something better -- freedom, equal rights, a wining Megabucks ticket... Hope can also be painfully dashed when tanks roll into Hama, the Arizona legislature does something phenomenally stupid and that lottery ticket only matches ONE number.