Saturday 27 October 2012

Hope and People

You don't owe any more to this city... you have given it everything...
 Not everything, not yet

Batman
(The Dark Knight Rises)

How many people do we have in this world who would simply give everything they have merely to see others happy and content? Not many. 
Next I will ask the obvious question, what is hope?

Is it the wish of a student, being unprepared for his exams, to pass his exams with good grades? Or, is it the belief of the patient that he will be cured by merely visiting the doctor?

Neither of these. Hope is something, it is said, unique to the very fabric  of the human nature. We put half of our best effort and "hope" that the most optimum result would be produced. We believe that there is somewhere some supreme being who looks after us. Who cares for us and would not leave us in an abyss. Hope allows us to cope up with the pressures of our day-to-day life and continue to exist.

Whatever one might say about hope, one aspect is pretty clear; we live by hope. Hope of a better life. It is argued by the non-believers that people try to prove the existence of alien beings that have superior knowledge than us merely to thwart that inevitable feeling of being left alone. Consider for example, that clerk you last saw in the electricity department when you last went to pay your bills. He might be churning in big amounts of money, but, definitely he never wanted to be there. He must have while in school dreamed of a life with more grandeur, luxury and respect. He did not or could not get that part of the gamble of life. Still he survives. Lives. Is it that he is content with his life? Or is it that he come to believe that this is how real life is?
No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.
                                                                                    -George Chakiris

No, the fact is, he has hope. Hope that "something" will happen and change his life altogether. Make an overnight overhaul in his lifestyle. This is how hope allows a man in general to persist. 

Still I would say that there is another flip side of hope. The hope of improvement is not always an objective, materialistic view. It is often about someone. About some "Hero". We all want a hero to exist in our lives who would pull us out of our darkness and agony. As is rightly quoted:
A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a little boy's shoulders to let him know that the world hadn't ended. 
 Men fail to understand the true nature of hope. We all need heroes in our lives. We stand in lines to just catch a glimpse of a movie actor. Why? Because he is a hero. He braves all odds and wins in the end. Finds the best life in the end. Gets the girl of his dream. We are fascinated by his success against obvious discomforts and obstructions. It is rightly said:

there can be no true despair without hope
 When we lose hope we lose our life or atleast the will to live. Had there been no despair in our life, there would be no need to hope for anything better. Life would become stagnant and we would cease to live. 

We need a hero and we need hope.