350. Enabling Hope

When I’m struggling with life, it can feel like I’m trapped in a cloud of darkness. I’m facing an endless series of challenges, shifting constantly from one difficulty to the next. Memories of past victories are no consolation, for every day is a new battle and the future looks bleak.

But then, without warning, something good happens. I can’t believe it’s real and I’m doubtful it will last. I’m already anxious about its eventual departure. I can’t trust it or enjoy it, because I expect it to leave me at any moment. I’m attached to the belief that the world is a terrible place and it will only get worse.

Pessimism has become entrenched in me by my daily experience of life. Because of this attachment, I’m completely incapable of enjoying the good that I’ve found. Instead, even this produces suffering in the form of anxiety, since it goes against my expectation of further misery. It feels like nothing more than an aberration that will disappear at any moment.

Of course, it’s also possible for the opposite attachment to form in me. I could get stuck in a kind of optimism where I believe everything will always get better. Then I would suffer grief or even despair when I find myself facing hardships that last longer than I think they should.

Both beliefs — pessimism and optimism — are delusions that produce enormous suffering when I’m attached to them. To instead feel joy from my experiences, I need to loosen myself from every form of attachment. It then becomes possible for me both to enjoy the good that comes and to weather the bad that might follow it.

By liberating myself from attachment, I enable the possibility of genuine hope, which never expects anything in particular. Hope is founded on the truth of possibility itself — the realization that goodness is always still possible regardless of what has already come. Through freedom from attachment, goodness becomes more and more possible. It becomes possible through my own actions, which are no longer reactions to suffering but responses to the immense need for compassion.