Is it better to live hopeless than with hope?

There are many ways to answer this question. First, you want to start with, what does “Hope” mean to you? Some people will say hope means the belief that you can succeed. Others will say, hope is an optimistic view for a positive outcome. To me, hope is to have a purpose for something and to believe that I have a possibility. Possibility when used with hope seems as a pessimistic view because that is not very hopeful. Meaning, that since possibility has a percentage that things go right, never forget the percentage that things go wrong. Another way to start this question is to question and put yourself in a similar occasion. For instance, Paul Baumer would have rather stayed in the trenches than retreated home for he feels hopeless and in agony at home, but is this not paradoxical? If you give a man the choice between fighting and having the possibility to die or staying at home with his loving family and no risk of sickness. Nine out of ten times the man will choose to stay at home. Why is that? Why is it that Paul Baumer felt hopeless on leave? This is because at home Paul felt no purpose, he was in agony that all of his friends out on the field were dying. Paul felt no purpose because he was on leave, what use did he have now. This is why to me hope is a purpose and a possibility. Furthermore, what is the point of life? In many religions and even for non-religious people it is to go somewhere or to enjoy life. From a religious perspective, their purposes are supposed to go to Heaven or the afterlife, or in some cases achieve Nirvana. The way these people achieve this is through being a good person or doing the morally right thing. To illustrate the point, you need to do something good, and that is their purpose. Going back to purpose comes hope. Now that we have answered the first question, we may begin to understand why it is better to live with hope than to not live with hope. There are many ideas on hope and possibility, for one think about the saying “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” To put it in simpler terms, if you do not take action you automatically do not receive any benefit, but if you take action, whether or not it is good or bad you have a chance, or in other words, a possibility that it would have gone good.  Which ties into “Hope”. Therefore, it is better to live with hope than without hope. 

However, you may ask, why did you ask such a redundant question obviously it is better to live with hope from an optimistic point of view. Well, going back to Paul Baumer, he felt hopeless at home yet that was the better option for survival. Now, when we look back at the idea of missing 100% of the shots you don’t take, is that not better sometimes? For example, what if you are running out of food in the trenches and you keep your belief that someone is coming, and as the days go by nobody is treading along with food? All of that hope turns into sadness and desperation. It makes you go insane, you feel unloved and uncared about, and you feel as if you are lost and in the wrong place. If you had no hope and had already given up all of these emotions of sadness would have already gone away when you died. You would have thought about all of the greater things in life by then, instead of weeping away as you die. 

It is contextual on whether to live hopeful or hopeless, but it is better to live with hope as many greater outcomes and possibilities arise rather than living hopelessly. Something to understand hope is, through this, slow motion is better than no motion.