Hope: More crumbs than banquet

Although its origins are not verifiable, the phrase ‘Hope is not a strategy,’ must resonate strongly with all of us as a ‘wake-up’ call, and really, wherever it comes from, we should be grateful for its message I suppose, but to rely upon hoping that your miracle is just around the corner, well, it’s hardly a legitimate ‘rock’ upon which to build your future, is it?

Since time immemorial, man has hoped. In the days of the caveman, the surely hoped for food, shelter, and companionship, among other things, not because they wanted them, but because they needed them. Today though depending upon where we are in the world, we hope for peace, safety, food, and water, the most basic of necessities, with comfort an illusion.

The Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, speaking at the 2008 Republican Convention in the United States, offered context saying that ‘as hope is not a strategy, neither is change a destination,’ in what was, for him, a rare moment of clarity. Like him, prominent movie director James Cameron, speaking of his search for the Titanic, added to the genuine lexicon, telling Nasa Administrators, “Luck is not a factor, as hope is not a strategy, and fear is not an option.” So, two men, who in their very different ways have helped shape our generation, and our futures, agree that hope exists, but not as an effect.

In fact, hope may be doing more harm than good. Think about how hope hurts. The more you hope a situation will change, the more you will imagine, and dream about the prospect of tantalising, new and better outcomes, until it becomes the next best thing to reality. Once you are on that perpetual hope... imagine... dream... reality... journey, seeking change for the better, is when you have further to fall, which makes it so much harder, and much more painful. Hope blinds you to reality, causes turmoil, physical and emotional, and probably distracts you from what you are genuinely able to achieve. “Hope” wrote Kayte Ferris, “makes you believe that the crumbs you’re receiving are a banquet.”

Even in our contemporary society, hope has almost become a scorned adage. Scholar and economist Dr Benjamin Akande, Dean of Webster University, wrote to President Barak Obama, in 2009, saying, “the fact remains that hope will not reduce housing foreclosures. Hope does not stop a recession. Hope cannot create jobs. Hope will not prevent catastrophic failures within banking and finance. Hope is not a strategy!”

Obama responded emphatically, saying that hope was not blind optimism, and that he was not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead, or the obstructions in his way. “Hope,” he said, “is the thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us, if we have the courage to reach for it, to work for it, and to fight for it!” In saying so, he points to the flaws surrounding hope, because if you will reach, work, and fight for something, you are not hoping, you are doing!

Hope though, is deeply ingrained in all of us, for better or worse. The ‘trick,’ if you like, is what we do with it, and to that extent we can’t live on it. Maybe if we treat it like a condiment. After all, we all like a little mustard on our meat, a little salt and pepper on our potatoes, and a little vinegar or dressing on our salads, don’t we? Whereas too much just spoils it. Hope, as much as it offers a pot of gold, will only get us so far.

Sitting around, or just lying there, wishing away our problems, hoping to win the lottery, unfortunately, is never going to work, so we need to get busy. Hope and prayer may help, and more likely the latter... for while hope may spring eternal, it’s a strategy only for faith, and not a recipe for success.