What is hope?

Today in the library, I spotted a book that was written on the age old theme of 'love, loss and rediscovering hope'. It seemed like a good book but I could not bring myself to try to read it. I realized at that point that I was not afraid if I would ever find hope again. I was scared of the fact that I will find it. After my last disappointment, I have been dodging my own hope.

So, what is hope? Is it a window, through which we look into the future? Is it a consolation we give ourselves promising for a better tomorrow? How do we know there would be one? Well, we can only 'hope'..

When viewed through this mirror, I found hope to be an empty boast. A baseless assumption. A day-dream. The future always remains shrouded and there is no way we can peek in. So how do we move forward? How do we live through today to see tomorrow? How do we expect to find something better in future?

Instead of being pulled forward by the delicate thread of hope, I would much rather walk the road of plans. Not future plans, present plans. Losing my hope, I realized that I was looking much too far into future. All I really had in my hands was the present, and by losing it, I lost all.

It is important to know why you do something and where it will take you. One should 'hope' for success in plans and keep the feet of ability rooted in reality. I don't if this makes any sense, but if I write it down 'its no longer threatening the life it belongs to'.

And the search begins..

Even before I started writing this blog, I went back to read one of my favorite speeches, delivered by Steve Jobs in 2005 at Stanford. I used to have faith. A firm belief that there was something higher, something more powerful than we are that runs the universe. I believed in 'The Secret' and it worked for me. I never came across one thing that I set my mind to, worked for and didn't get.

This, until I cast my eyes on the guy I fell in love with. 

I met a guy from my college, four months before we both graduated, and fell in love. It was so obvious and immediate, I never felt he was not a part of life. My life before I met him had been normal, nothing out of the usual, but meeting him made me feel really special and lucky as to have found the love that everyone should at least once experience.

However, I was leaving the country for 5 years for graduate school and he wouldn't come in my way of realizing my career. So, with the plan that he would follow me to grad school, we parted our ways, physically. Here in America, we remained in love, living for each other and fighting our daily battles.

It has now been almost two years since I moved to the US and his application to my graduate school has been rejected twice. In the past 1-1/2 years, we have spent 4 days together. We celebrated our 2 year anniversary this January, having physically spent only 4 months with each other.

During these two years, there has been nothing else that we have wished for. All the creative pursuits of my brain; wishing, dreaming, fantasizing, thinking, wanting, planning; have been soaked up by my vision of the day when we would be one, never to be separated. We really thought we could have it all.

This rejection of his, was the final straw. Nothing worked. Hard work, prayers, free-will.. My three ingredients for preparing just about anything, did not work anymore. I want to believe that 10 years later, this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to me. But why do I have to have the best thing. I want this and I want it now. Why can I not have it?

My entire belief system is shattered, or probably obsolete. I need a new belief system. Something that can give me courage again. Right now, I am at square one, with no assumptions. I am going to take up the pain staking job of analyzing every single thought and emotion generated by my brain to free myself of the hatred I feel for life right now and build a simpler belief in life.

A good friend of mine says, it is foolish to not recognize faith. I sincerely hope it is so. I have lost my way back to home and I wish I find it.