Hope

I'm big fan of storytelling, most of all, the way heroes and villains are so frequently portrayed so obviously. The good guy, usually dressed in white defeats the black evil doer and world peace follows.

Right. That's great. Good for them.

Sometimes, however, stories manipulate the truth and bad guys can be portrayed as good. I would like to expose one of these sheeps for the wolf that it is. My target is a little thing most of you have heard of called hope.

Hope is not good. It is not your friend. Hope is a wolf, and it will betray you when it starts to get hungry.

Let's use an example. Lets use Max, the cab driver from the movie 'Collateral'. For those of you of who haven't seen it, Max is a cab driver who dreams of owning his own limo company (there's a part where an assassin by the name of Tom Cruise gets in his back seat but that is irrelevant for this point). He has plans and ideas formulating in his head, talks the talk and walks... oh wait, he doesn't 'walk'.

Do you know why? I'll tell you.

Hope.

He hopes it will happen. He hopes one day his dream will come. With a pinch of irony, the hope we have for something often paralyses us against making it happen. Hope leads to fear that our dreams won't come true, or be as good. Most of the time people would rather hang on to the hope they have for something than actually try because trying means the image they have in their heads will have to be destroyed.

It's such a shame because hope is meaningless. Actions count! I understand the comfort hope can bring but unless you try to achieve what you want hope gathers more value than it deserves and becomes a hinderance.

I'm not saying this to be cruel. I'm saying it to give you the motivation to actually chase your dreams and desires. Hopefully at least (I couldn't resist!)