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On the tyranny of hope
6/7/23
Hope is a tyrant
Sometimes
Like a person giving CPR to a corpse
long after it's gone limp and cold,
I've been notorious for clinging to hope
long after the situation at hand
warrants it.
Call it my relentless optimism.
Call it my boundless capacity for stupidity.
But it's not always bad obviously
Sometimes
Hope is couragous
Sometimes, it keeps people alive
And it can be a beautiful thing
But most of the time,
at least in my case,
clinging on to the shimmering
idealizations of my imagination
turns out to be less of an act
of courage
and more like an act of
self-harm.
These days,
I'm learning about the relief that accompanies the relinquishment of unrealistic expectations
and of the freedom that comes from giving up
These days,
I'm learning to be comfortable with accepting things for what they are
and not for what I believe they should be