It’s common to confuse hope with a wish. Wishing tends to zero in on a particular outcome. We might wish for the job offer. Or we wish the test result comes back negative. We might wish someone would change, or stay, or come back. A wish says, this is what I want, and I’ll be okay if I get it. And sometimes we do get what we wish for. But often, life doesn’t line up with what we hoped for, and outcomes don’t play out the way we imagined. And that’s where a more mature form of hope is needed.
Hope isn’t about placing a bet on an outcome. It’s not about scripting the future and crossing our fingers that it follows a plan. Hope is quieter. Slower. Less insistent. And much more powerful. Hope says: Even if things don’t go the way I imagined, there is still an unseen future that is worth waiting for. Hope allows for uncertainty without despair or demand. Hope trusts that something good will find its way to us, even if we can’t yet see what it is.
That kind of hope takes courage, and it takes trust. It asks us to loosen our grip. To let go of needing a specific outcome to believe life can still be meaningful in ways not yet understood. It’s not passive and takes a great deal of work and practice and it’s forward looking. And this form of hope walks with a kind of faith that doesn’t rely on the kind of vision we’re used to.
Most of us have been through seasons where the outcome we wanted didn’t materialize. A door we thought would open stayed closed. A relationship ended when we were still holding on. A path we thought would be clear turned rocky. In those moments, we’re tempted to give up, get bitter or shut down. But there’s most likely a subtle voice within you at times, or one being spoken by those who love you, or heard during moments of relief – sometimes barely audible perhaps – and it’s whispering: Maybe this isn’t the end of the story. Maybe there’s still something ahead that you can’t yet see. That whisper is hope. It doesn’t erase disappointment, heal the hurt or clean up the mess. But it keeps us from collapsing into it. It reminds us that the story isn’t finished. That what we can’t yet imagine is waiting beyond our feelings and beyond the narratives we create after we don’t reach the ending we had wished for.
And hope doesn’t often manifest itself through excitement. Sometimes it’s just getting up and trying again. Reaching out one more time. Taking the next small step with no clear idea of where it will lead. But it’s in those ordinary acts of persistence that hope starts to take root. We don’t have to feel optimistic to be hopeful. We just need to be willing to stay open and keep believing there’s something more, even if it arrives in a form outside what we wanted or imagined.
We need to be willing to practice letting go of what we wished for and leave room for unexpected possibility. And, during times of great trial, that is just shy of a miracle. So, if you find yourself feeling betrayed by what you had wished for – if you’re standing in that quiet, uncertain place where you’re not sure what’s next – just know: hope doesn’t need a map. It just needs you to stay attentive and curious.