sooooo ,hope is kinda weird (okay ,i’m officially terrible at titles )

Chance.

What are the first associations one has with that word? For some, it’s the hip-hop artist , who's had a fairly illustrious career, who's tailgated it with his latest new god-awful album. For others, it’s the famous Indian movie, Chance pe Dance, with its quintessential Bollywood aesthetic, topped with the typical casually sexist atmosphere, and insanely catchy songs, slathered with half a story, but a full production company. But what is it really about? Discarding the proper noun versions of the word, why do we care about chance?

The term chance comes from the game of dice. And as history has proven, many of the most consequential actions are based on the flimsy whims of luck. Whether it be winning the El Gordo, one of the biggest lotteries in the world (worth more than 2 billion dollars), or the discovery of Penicillium notatum by Alexander Fleming, which changed the course of medical and the general history of mankind.

Sure, we are creatures of wit, determination and power, yet, all of us are wrapped around the fingers of delicate fate.

Kingdoms (ethereal or otherwise, have been held at the mercy of chance. Even the Greek gods divided their realms of the sky, earth and sea over a game of dice. Even they agreed (they barely agreed on anything) that fate is blind to their wants. That it truly is the one Rational, not bending to the mortal rules of passion, power and pain.

It is random.

Which again seems to be the only rule that the universe seems to follow, the order of chaos.

The game of dice was always a gamble. Kingdoms lost and won (Pandavas and Kauravas in the Mahabharat) even Church bells (as in the case of Henry VII) You win some, you lose some.

But the very idea of gambling was very foreign to me. Why would one voluntarily choose to, sink their money, their possessions, their time, their relationships, for a statistically improbable chance of winning? Why one, would lose themselves even, just for the chance of an elusive victory

These, of course, are the extreme cases, the bottom of the barrel, the exceptions. Regardless, this happens all over the world

According to AddictionHq.org, Over half of the world (4.6 billion people) gamble at least once a year and about 1.6 billion people do it regularly, with the USA and China having the highest number of gamblers in the world. And about 4-10% per cent of them on average tend to develop an addiction to it. Now you do the math, it’s a pretty high number of addicts. (I'm not gonna do the math cause I'm lazy)

I’m not here to dictate one’s choices in life. Addiction is a culmination of various storms in one’s life, not a one-cause fits all thing, so I don’t care if you do or not.

I just wanted to figure out, one of the reasons, why we as a species have been drawn to the allure or charm of chance.

And then I figured, where do I take my chances, give it my all and then some more, even if success isn’t guaranteed.

Then it hit me.

Crushes'

Crush,a.k.a puppy love a.k.a the searing fuel for all cringy teenage romances.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? When you’ve looked at someone, and in a cheesy, rom-com Esque twist of fate, the people, the noise, the riff-raff if you will, dim out.

Time itself bends, to the will of what seems to be fate. A moment stretched to eternity like tasting the best bubble gum, a flavour so elusive, so ephemeral, so rare, that one holds on to it, with all dear life, soul and more. And as if in the spectral transient state, you ask yourself,” Is this home?”

Monarch butterflies flying about in one’s stomach, stealing glances, stretching time and perceptions, the mother of pain and passion. Yes, that crush.

The panic, shame, breathless euphoria, sometimes desire itself, all wrapped into one abstract syllable

Yes, that crush.

What joins us together and tears us apart, fuel for sleepless nights, the rush of delirious zeal, slathered with anticipation and wishful daydreaming.

Yes, that crush.

All in five letters, A syllable, microcosm of chaos and order.

Now obviously, I'm exaggerating as most pretentious, college “artists “do, blowing up something out of proportion like an elephant-sized helium balloon. Yet, this experience, at least a likeness of it, is real.

The experience of having a crush, if we pull aside the curtains of lust, skewed perceptions and well, physical attraction, is that of hope, at least, according to my pea-brain.

Hope, that the dreams in which you’ve built your castles with them, will come true.

Hope that they and you will see each other, know each other and love (whichever definition you may hold for it) each other for who you both are.

Hope that this feeling isn’t fleeting, that it’ll stand the test of time, weather, worry and euphoria.

Hope that both your inadequacies, failures and fallacies, will melt into each other, as you become complete.

Hope that someone, like a pair of spectacles, will help you see and know the world in crisp clarity.

Hope that all the years you’ve wasted, all the tears you can't unrun, and all the wrong turns you’ve made could finally lead to contentment and a happiness of sorts in this cruel, cynical world.

Hope that they are that someone, whose mere presence will make you whisper, in earnest,” This is it, I'm home.

Now I know why my friends call me hopeless romantic.

The act of gambling, in my eyes, in part is a game of hope. Hope that despite all your losses, this next throw will change all that, will make it all fade into irrelevancy.

That despite all your sunken costs, the people you’ve lost, you’ll gain it all back, and much more

You’ll be worthy again, it’ll all be ultimately worth it, all after this next twirl of the hands of fate.

For all involved in either case, hope gives a direction, the illusion of security in the future, a destined destination, created by us and for us.

This truth anchors me to a very interesting cognitive bias known as the sunken cost fallacy. It speaks of this cognitive process when people continue to invest time and resources into something that is failing or shows sign of failure, because they are afraid of losing everything that they put into it. Their time, money passion etc. All of it, will be for naught, if they stop it.

In other words, people are likely to continue spending money and sometimes everything else to sustain a dying endeavor, simply because they had hope that it’ll all turn back.

When people are in too deep, they dig a bigger hole for themselves, by trying to compensate for the hole that they have already dug themselves into.

To me, this exemplifies the dangers of unhindered hope. On how something harmless and helpful can, if unchecked, lead us to be blinded by our lusts, letting the world cinder in its flames, while we live in the dream of what could be, rather than see what truly is.

Part 3

Greek mythology has always fascinated me. It’s chock-full of tales of betrayal, deceit, hurt, passion and a whole lot of drama. From gods to mortals and those in between, from monsters in absurd shapes and sizes to ones with skins of our own.

Among the plethora of Greek myths, there’s one that has always been in my mind. It has many of the characteristics of a typical Greek tale topped with a fairly ambiguous ending.

It’s the tale of Pandora's urn (yes, it is an urn. No, it's not a box, everyone has lied to you, I'm so sorry)

According to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by the gods. Zeus ordered her to be molded out of the earth as part of humanity’s punishment for Prometheus’ theft of fire, the secret that the gods kept away from us mortals.

A curse guised as a gift .

According to the myth, the gods gave her a jar that contained all the evils of the World and ordered her not to open it.

And as the story goes, after long, arduous moments of temptations she succumbed to the wails of curiosity. Despite all the warnings, the urn was opened.

Behold, pestilence, pride, vices, sickness, death, turmoil, strife, jealousy, hatred, famine, were all released into the world to settle upon it like a dark cloud till the end of humanity.

She had the paid the price for her curiosity and the gods malevolence.

The interpretation of things, especially for something as fossilized as Greek mythology, tends to get a bit tricky. Some versions state that the urn contained blessings, others say that there were 2 urns, one of the blessings and another of curses.

The generally preached story though, leaves with Pandora closing the urn in time to leave one, just one thing inside.

Hope.

After all the disease and suffering that was released onto humanity, the sole survivor of the god’s dastardly plan and Pandora’s folly was hope.

Elemental hope.

In his book Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedreich Nietzsche argued that ". Hope, in truth, is the evilest of evils because it prolongs man's torment.”

The last and greatest curse was the curse of unflinching, potent hope. The all too familiar nature of it, Braggadociously brandishing a knife, before the eye of a tornado, Commanding the behemoth to kneel and beg, tremble in fear of this indomitable piece of metal, and the power of the one who yields it.

That hope.

Going against all odds, obstinately and arrogantly fighting on, intoxicated in the pride and overconfidence of our abilities, leading to the falls of death or worse, defeat.

That hope.

That despite all their misgivings, fallacies and vices, that there may still be the good, you once felt enamored by the one you loved.

That hope.

That all your contributions, the grace that you’ve shown and have been shown, will not disappear with your final breath.

That hope.

That the very next flip of the lever will flip your failures to fortune, your hardships to your well-earned rewards, your tears for all that you lost to tears for all that you have won and got back.

That Hope.

Sometimes I wonder, that as the millennia passed, assuming that Pandora was real and she, remained alive (I mean, she was the first human, after all, she must be having some benefits for it right, like lifetime access to the Fountain of Youth, discount offers to the Hephaestus line of products, that kind of stuff) did she give in?

Did she let hope Out of the urn and into the human spirit, Forever dominating our lives, and in doing so, making and breaking the course of human history?

And if so, would that have been good?

Would we have been better off, if hope it didn’t exist at all, if it was left there in the urn, to stew for the rest of eternity, unbeknownst to the rest of the world?

I’m not exactly sure.

Part 4

I think that hope in moderation, like all things, as my mother always preached on her woody pulpit, among the plants she tended to, is good.

We wouldn’t travel unknown paths, chase unlikely dreams, tread paths far from where the bones of our ancestors lay, far from perceived rhyme and reason.

Had it not been for hope

We wouldn’t dare to look for better land and bounteous produce, would never have crossed seas, for travel and trade and domestication

Had it not been for hope.

We would never dream to rise in revolution against tyranny, natural and mortal, in the face of death, infamy and failure.

Had it not been for hope.

We wouldn’t dare to dream, of a future, where mutual understanding and love live in perfect harmony, where silence in each other's atmosphere, provides comfort and ease

Had it not been for hope.

We would never fess up, consume courage and double it, to be honest to one another of what you know to be true.

Had it not been for hope.

Through my, inconsequential (in the grand scheme of things), but very much important, arguably definitive series of moments in my life, I learnt that hope is a double-ended sword.

Not a double edged, a double ended sword.

Hope is the defense against the cynicism and misanthropy that sometimes overwhelms us in the burdensome times of our lives. Providing this ethereal will to keep going on, when everything and everyone seems to go dark.

Yet, it can leave us drunk in our tiny spheres of knowledge and power, where we leave ourselves with no more room to grow, a perpetual state of arrested development.

If it isn't kept in balance, it’ll pierce us or, it’ll pierce everyone else.

Either way, pain will come.

It's funny how, despite all of this, hope drives us, both as individuals and as a species, whether we know it or not.

We don’t have the absolute certainty, that we’ll wake up tomorrow. Nor do we know whether the dreams we slog for now, will pay off. Hell, "the microorganism of 2020” is a clear indication of how nothing is certain. Not 100% per cent anyway.

All the empires that have stood in this realm, so proud, so bold, so tall, they all crumbled. All of them.

Brick by brick.

Bone by bone.

They were broken by another or worse, dusted off, far from the seemingly the immortal reach of history, never to be known to have existed.

Despite the certainty of essentially one thing in the universe, that being death, we still hope. We still sleep in peace, wake up the next day, brush the same teeth, pull the same hair into neat, socially acceptable stacks and curls.

Why?

Because, deep down, I think we hope. That's why I feel humanity isn’t doomed.

At least, not yet.

Cause, despite the perilous pestilences that envelop us, global or personal, hope always seems to find a way, at least for most of us.

We hope to fight and we fight to hope.

I don’t know why I wanted to end on a positive note, maybe it’s because I'm a sucker for Happily Ever Afters, then again who isn't.

In the current environment (political, social, biological, microbiological, historical, the list goes on) hopelessness seems to be our birthright. As a generation and as individuals, as nations, families etc.

The mistakes of our ancestors snowballing into colossal, systemic problems, the uncertainty of the future, the valuation of people based on certain economic output, among a myriad of other problems, will turn anyone sane human being, into the pulp of their former self.

All their dreams, aspirations and ideals sucked dry, due to the “practicalities “and “logical “next steps in life.

Yet we as a species, somehow, despite it all the nihilistic dread, despite all the crippling anxiety seem, to make it through.

And in defiance of it all, I hope.

I hope.

I hope.

To sustain me, in part, even guide me, even if it seems like I am hastily stumbling forward on a steadily burning trapeze line, while juggling many balls (or knives. No yea knives are a better option because people will childishly laugh at balls, I know that for sure) at a time.

Despite it all, I want to hope, that we’ll make it through, to the egalitarian utopia, that we’ve built in our heads.

Or at least die trying to.

Hope is often seen as a symbol for the weak.Kind of like faith sometimes .You aren't strong enough yourself so you believe in something stronger .

And maybe its is true

I’d like to leave with a poem that sings about hope. A poem that has on countless occasions provided that painful fistful of flame to go on, in an increasingly voidal and hopeless world

“Hope” is the thing with feathers- EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.