Cultivate A Hopeless Kind of Hope.

Yes, well, if you cling to Hope: "Grounds for believing that something good may happen," your Hope is often dashed against the rocks like a soggy old coat. Your little pitiful Hope needs to be resilient. It is a little thing, a little spark inside you. And it is surrounded by a hostile, unforgiving reality.

Maybe we need a sort of "Hopeless Hope." Sort of Zen of Hope. Cultivate Hope, but don't expect much from it. If you cling too closely to Hope, a sense of Hopelessness is not far away. That good thing doesn't always come. Instead, you get a series of not so good things piling up. And then there are the really bad, unavoidable things that happen: Death, Loneliness, Disfiguring Accidents. 

How to encompass all that in your little sparking Empire of Hope? I don't rightly know. Try to live day to day. "Be Here Now." Lean to the light. Let Hope bubble up, but figure it will float away, be popped and pummeled by outrageous Fortune, and disappear just like any other nebulous, insubstantial bubble. 

Hope for another little bubble to bubble up. Not much to live on, but maybe that has to be enough.