Two types of hope
"There's always hope," the optimists say. But it's not always the cheerful kind
Mentions suicide in a fairly abstract way
When I was a depressed teenager in secondary school, one of my peers told me I was a pessimist. I understood why they would think that, but I disagreed. Every day I woke up in a world that had no joy, no possibility of future joy, and a succession of small pains, and I decided to get up and go through the motions of living rather than take the vastly more logical option of dying. That, to me, seemed like the height of optimism. I went so far as to say that all depressed people who managed to survive the first impulse to die had to be the most extreme optimists alive.
I've been musing on that lately, and also the fact that the word "hope" seems to have two meanings, related but very much not identical. One meaning is the simple colloquial sense. "There's still hope," we say, meaning that there are grounds for believing the outcome we want is still possible. People who see a lot of this kind of hope tend to be cheerful sorts that my old classmate would have classed as optimists.
The other kind of hope is deeper. More of an instinct. I've heard it compared to the force that sends a seedling forcing its way through rocky soil to begin its growth. This kind of hope doesn't have any reason behind it. It might even persist in defiance of all reasoned arguments. The desired outcome is so unlikely it barely even moves the probability needle, but that is no reason not to try.
The simple kind of hope is fairly pleasant to feel. It helps you to stay cheerful and energised and keeps you motivated when you encounter obstacles. Having hope in that sense is definitely a good thing.
The deeper hope is only noticeable when the simple hope runs dry. It doesn't feel particularly energising and sometimes it feels actively exhausting. When there seems no logical reason to think things will come right, giving up and embracing the peace of oblivion feels very tempting. The deeper hope rejects even this equivocal comfort and plunges you back into the struggle.
So it's not in any way a cheerful kind of hope, but it is a reliable one. A hope that depends on having reasons to believe can let you down in the face of a severe enough setback. If you have relied on that hope, losing it may feel worse than if you'd never hoped at all. But a hope that arises from fundamental instinctive stubbornness will always be there - even if you don't always welcome it.
When you compare two things, it's natural to ask which is better, but that doesn't really apply here. The instinct of hope is so fundamental that it's hard to imagine lacking it and still functioning, let alone having the reasoned hope. So you either have both, or you just have the instinct, and it's very obvious which is better.
Instinctive hope is, as I say, only really noticeable when there is no other hope. It's the last defence against despair, the final barrier against the temptation to give up altogether. It's not inspiring, but when it's all you've got, it's worth clinging to with all your strength.