Hope, a Beacon or Abyss?

What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear or read this word? A sunrise, a sunset, a crushed heart that belongs to you or a loved one? A red rose, fragile, vulnerable, but thriving in the midst of a harsh winter's storm? For me, it brings forth a phrase which I have read in The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly.

Said by the doctor who was warning his patient's best friend, Fiona Finnegan.

"Be careful of too much hoping," he'd warned her. "It is hope, not despair, that undoes us all."

The reaction of Fiona was to never give up hope. Contradicting? I agree. Wait,there is a lot more. In the same story, Fiona had a dream of owning a shop with a lad whom she liked. Unfortunately, that man was thick headed enough to run off with a woman, giving the excuse of drunken folly. What happened to her then? She plodded day by day in a never ending limbo until she found out that her dad was murdered after her mom by her employer. That forced her to go to New York and begin anew.

So what is hope,by the dictionary?A feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. Let's face it, all of us living, breathing creatures on the same planet,hope. An ant hopes to find food, a dog hopes for a bone, a polar bear hopes to escape those bent on hunting down their fur. We hope for more than what a normal creature hopes for, being lost in a world where people seek the paeans of power to their own success. An average worker hopes for enough to feed and clothe his family. A person on the rise with youthful spark hopes for more, a higher position, a bigger bonus, a Mercedes perhaps or a beautiful diamond from Tiffany's?

Hope is of course a vital thing for us, we might as well take ourselves to the grave if we ever stop believing in our dreams, hoping for a better tomorrow. But is there a limit to what we can hope? We can pray about it, do everything we can about it and strive to a goal but we are merely human. Compared to the infinite cycles of water, our life spans are worth about a nanosecond to that eternity. No make it a hundredth or billionth of a nanosecond.

About the thing that the doctor said, I feel that there is a bit of truth in it. If you cling on to much on a non-existent dream or hope, when you really have no more of it, part of you dies with it. Like Xuelian in the Embers of Heaven by Alma Alexander, when the Golden Wind cadets broke her kingfisher comb, her only link to the dead emperor, she no longer cared if she was dead or alive. Her old, vulnerable body taking and withstanding any physical pain because there was nothing left to hope for.

So is hope something that lets us live but crushes us with its full weight the moment your dreams and life are dashed, like an abyss much easier to fall in than to climb out? Or is it something great that keeps us living and the circumstances are the ones that destroy us? I have no answer to that question. No idea on how to reason on such a thing. A beacon or an abyss.