Against hope and joy

The insidious nature of two of our most common emotions

Aug 31, 2024

ONCE AGAIN, I stumbled upon the maxim “Hope for the best but plan for the worst.” This cliché has it all backward. The much better strategy is to expect the worst in the hope that you will be proven wrong and pleasantly surprised. This way when the worst comes, you are fully prepared for it -- plus you gain the satisfaction of having been correct in your original estimation. When the worst does not come, it offers a big relief and an opportunity to experience joy and happiness.

It also helps to downgrade the role of hope altogether, or even better, to simply do away with hope. Hope as an emotion is a recipe for disappointment. Expect a specific outcome, or don’t expect a specific outcome. Even better, of course, is simply to be here now. Focus on the present. Breathe. If you can do something to steer an outcome, do it. But don’t sit back and put yourself at the mercy of some vague sense of hope or yearning.

ALSO, WHAT IS IT WITH the insidious manner in which “joy” has become aspirational, some sort of cultural indices of success. Like investing in hope, seeking out joy puts the cart before the horse. Joy can be one of the feelings that result from an achievement, a reward for its own sake. But employing joy as an agent of change, as a means to achieving happiness, is a contradiction in terms.

Be honest – those ambassadors for “joy” who walk among us espouse a vapid, superficial happiness based upon nothing genuine. It’s like a drug high. It’s artificial, vaporous. Whereas we have much to learn from or be inspired by those who model a sense of equanimity grounded in some sort of experience, wisdom, discipline, practice, ritual, or belief. Or even better, grounded in love.

To experience joy without love is a hollow victory.

I LOVE READING. I love reading for its own sake. And for that reason, it brings me joy, as well as a host of other feelings, emotions, and benefits.

I love my nearest and dearest. The exchange of loving feelings that passes from one partner to another, from parents and children, from the closest of friends, is a magical force offering a hint of divinity on earth. That one of the fringe benefits of feeling love is experiencing joy is just that; a fringe benefit whose only value is in what created the joy, not the joy itself, in the first place.

Do not speak to me of hope and joy….

Everything Is Broken

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