misterdaniel

Working on Core Values with my therapist today and the first one she started with was 'Hope' and my reaction was interesting.

Leaving aside the meaningless platitudes (I hope you have a good journey, a nice day, whatever) - no, not meaningless, but almost - there for sociability and politeness, which are important, but not with any particular meaning. Anyway - leaving those aside, what does hope mean for me?

So much of my thoughts around the word are tied to a god I don't believe exists and a faith which shaped and still shapes me, even though I no longer hold it to be true. "We have this hope, as an anchor for the soul" is from Pauls letter to the Hebrews, and is why many sailors used to tattoo an anchor on themselves. It was that point of stability, and a hope that they would return home.

Searching for the bible reference then leads me to https://becomingchristians.com/2025/03/19/hope-as-anchor-of-the-soul-what-does-it-mean/ where I see the following:

Picture yourself as a ship in the middle of the ocean.
Now imagine trying to face a storm without an anchor.
The waves hit.
The wind screams.
You try to stay afloat, but you’re completely at the mercy of the storm.
That’s what life feels like without hope.

And that's where I hit a problem. The practical, autistic part of me wants to say 'you can't drop an anchor in the middle of the ocean - it's too deep. And in a storm in the middle of the ocean, you don't want an anchor, you want to run with the storm as much as possible to lessen its power".

I get what they're trying to say, but it just digs at me when someone doesn't understand language well enough to know why a metaphor doesn't work. Obviously, the post continues, you need to put your faith in god, the steadfast anchor.

And maybe that's why I don't really resonate with the word - it's not a core value for me at all. Maybe I'm lucky enough to have never been in a situation where hope was all I had, but it feels like the antithesis of agency, and that is absolutely one of my core values. I have control over my own actions, and reactions, and I have agency in most circumstances - again, I acknowledge my privilege in being able to say that.

For me, hope is what's left when you've done all you can, and it's now in the lap of the gods. I was going to write its external salvation rather than internal - but it's not even salvation - it's the hope of it. There's no ability to act on hope.

This isn't a bad thing, by the way. Not from my perspective, at least. I don't live my life without hope - I live my life as much as I can assuming that I will never need to hope.

Back to Paul - but 1 Corinthians 13 this time:

 

And now these three remain; faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

That I can give a resounding Amen to.