The Importance of Hope

As someone who loves words, I appreciate when I learn a nuance that I didn’t know before. A few years ago I discovered that our word “hope” has a distinction in ancient languages that it does not have in English.

In two thousand year old Greek, hope means more than desire; it also means confident expectation.

For us, “hope” is often equivalent to “wish.” I find myself saying, “I hope you have a great weekend” or “I hope that test/project/conversation/flight/paper/drive/vacation/lunch goes well.”

If “wish” is all that is meant in hope, what good is it? Why would hope be something we have any use for?

Instead, I want to change my language. I want to say “wish” when I mean wish, and I want to say “hope” when I mean I believe something is possible.

You see, I struggle with cynicism. Strike that, I don’t struggle with it; I embrace it. Perhaps the better statement is, cynicism is a big part of my life. I tend to think that someone already drank the water, because that glass is certainly half empty. Hope is so important because it indicates a belief that something is possible. When I relegate hope to merely meaning “wish,” I remove the importance of the word. I remove its power to make me believe that the improbable is possible and that the extraordinary could become reality. When hope is just desire, I’m only telling you what I want. But when hope becomes belief in the future, that gives me a new lens to see the world around me.

Hope is just a word, one for me to use however I wish; but hope feels different than mere desire.