Hope: Beautiful, Brutal, and Barely There

An honest look at the feeling we can’t seem to live without.

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-🏴‍☠️-Short Story-🏴‍☠️-

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Now Serving Delusion

I arrived at the DMV on a Tuesday morning, which was, according to the ancient Mayans and also my horoscope, the optimal day to test one’s belief in societal constructs and also despair.

It was 9:02 a.m. I had hope. Rookie mistake.

Number 418. I looked at my slip and then at the screen. Now serving: 372.

Okay. Okay, not bad. Forty six people. That's a math problem, not a crisis. I had snacks. I had water. I had four meticulously filled out forms, signed in blue ink as per page 3, subsection B of the DMV scrolls, also known as the PDF from hell.

I scanned the room. The air was thick with fluorescent regret. The chairs were designed by medieval sadists, just the right height to make your spine question its purpose in life. There was a child licking the floor. His mother was playing Candy Crush with the intensity of a NASA engineer. A full grown man in a Gap kids flannel shirt was snoring so loudly I began to wonder if he was doing it just to feel alive.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 373. 9:51a.m.

I sipped my water. Conservatively. Like a camel who knew this was a mirage. I watched people. I counted them, not to pass the time, but to tally the competition. If even five left, five gave up on their noble bureaucratic pilgrimage, that’s five numbers closer. Five fewer broken souls in line before me.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 374. 10:22 a.m.

There it was. Hope. That whisper of a notion. That someone would tap out, say, “To hell with my registration,” and storm out dramatically. I imagined myself outlasting them all. I would be the DMV highlander. There can be only one.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 375. 10:46 a.m.

A teen with earphones got up, sauntered over like he was headed to a smoothie stand, not the altar of state sanctioned suffering. I stared at his back, defiant, hoodie wrapped, blissfully unaware. He had a single sheet. No folder. No envelope. No desperate manila folder from 1998 like the rest of us, clinging to sanity by way of stapled proof of identity. And he got to go before me. Just strutted up like bureaucracy was a game he already beat. I hated him. I wanted to be him. Mostly I hated him.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 376. 11:14 a.m.

Someone in the corner stood, looked around with wild eyes, and dropped his number to the floor and whispered, “I can’t do this,” and walked out into the light. I wanted to salute him. Instead I scooped up his abandoned number like a scavenger of human weakness. 420. Useless. Higher than mine. That thought made me chuckle, higher number, 420. Of course it was. I tucked it into my pocket anyway, like a trophy from his despair. Proof that someone had broken before me. A reminder that he had dreams once, plans, perhaps for lunch. But not me, I was still here, marinating in the sterile soup of perseverance. If I died in this chair, I wanted the coroner to find it in my jacket and know: I hung onto hope and I fought.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 377. 11:18 a.m.

This was it. They must be speeding up, except, no, it just meant another lost soul had tapped out. People were dropping like flies in a sauna. Hope surged again, that manic kind that feels like preworkout coursing in your veins but reeks of hand sanitizer and boiled sweat.

I checked my documents for the 47th time. Address change form. Proof of residence. Proof of existing. Blood type. Soul signature. An affidavit signed by my mailman confirming I do, in fact, receive junk mail at my current address.

My phone buzzed. I jumped like I’d been tased, snapped out of a trance I hadn’t realized I’d entered. I was deep in it. The zone. The danger zone. Eyes locked on the screen like a gambler watching a roulette wheel.

A text from my wife: “You still at the DMV?”

Still. Like it was a lifestyle. Like I had set down roots and was now the village elder of Section B, Seat 12. I typed back: “Yes. I’ve joined a small society. We have a bartering system and a calendar made of Tic Tacs. Jerry controls the remote. I think he used to be an accountant, but now he’s just our shaman.” I hit send. No emoji. This wasn’t emoji territory. This was survival.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 378. 12:06 p.m.

A man yelled, “Are you serious?! I had an appointment!” Then stormed out, righteous and broken. Victory. Again. I stood to quietly celebrate, careful not to blow my cover, couldn’t let Jerry see me smile. Not yet. That joy though was quickly lost as my legs tingled like they’d forgotten how to leg.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 379. 12:18 p.m.

A whisper next to me. “I think they’re skipping numbers. I was 377. I never got called.” Paranoia spread like wildfire. Someone stood and shouted, “They’re testing us!” I stayed silent. I knew the truth. This wasn’t a test. This was a religion. Hope isn’t a feeling. It’s a chant. A mantra you repeat with each number.

The numbers on the screen blinked. 380. 12:42 p.m

I smiled. Not because I was happy, happiness had left hours ago with the woman who cried after number 373 was called. No, I smiled because someone else had left. Just stood up, defeated, and walked out like hope was optional. And I was still here. Still clinging to my number like it meant something. I still had hope. Not the noble kind, they burned that out of me around number 379, but the greasy, competitive kind. The kind that whispers, "If enough people quit, you win."

All of this, this bureaucratic purgatory, this waiting room full of expired dreams and foot odor, just so I could update an address that was already correct. Already correct. Except they misspelled Lane as Lame. Which, in retrospect, might’ve been the first honest thing the state ever did. But no, I couldn’t let that stand. Not on my license. Not in this democracy. So here I sat, punished for caring too much about a typo and too little about my sanity, begging the almighty State to grant me the privilege of existing where I already live.

Then I saw it: Now Serving: A001. They’d switched systems. The numbers reset. A cruel reboot. Every clerk but one wandered off for lunch like it was nothing. I could feel the hope draining from my body like lukewarm coffee down a cracked Styrofoam cup. Was this it? Was I the next to fall? A quitter?

No.

I adjusted in my seat. I would persist. Even if the game had changed, I refused to lose, because I had hope.

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-🏴‍☠️-Essay-🏴‍☠️-

Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Lewiston ME (2024). Photo by Josh Hughes

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Definitions and Distortions of Hope

Hope wears many masks.

The dictionary keeps it simple. Merriam-Webster defines hope as “a desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” A clinical, clean description. Straightforward. Almost sterile. Like it belongs in a brochure about insurance or pharmaceuticals. It reads like it was written by someone who has never had to hope just to make it through a day.

In Arabic, the word for hope is ’rajaa’ (رجاء), which carries more weight than just wishing. It holds a spiritual dimension, a plea to the Divine, offered with humility. Hope isn’t just a wish. It’s a surrender. A longing with reverence, whispered into the wind, trusting it will land somewhere beyond yourself.¹

In French, hope becomes l’espoir. It’s elegant, delicate. But beneath the poetry, there’s always that tinge of doubt. The French know hope as both beauty and burden, a suspended state between desire and despair. A candle burning in a closed room, unsure if anyone will see it flicker.²

In Japanese, the word kibō (希望) combines “hope” with the characters for "wish" and "expectation.” But culturally, hope is restrained, almost quiet. It is not shouted from rooftops, it is carried in silence, with dignity, because expressing too much of it might invite disappointment. Hope is subtle. Almost invisible. But when it appears, it is profound.³

The ancient Norse culture didn’t even have a word for hope as we understand it. Their view was rooted in fate and honor, not blind optimism. They didn’t hope for victory, they prepared for the worst and met it with courage. Hope was considered weakness unless it was backed by action. To live was to defy death with every breath, not to beg the gods for mercy.⁴

In some Buddhist traditions, hope is viewed with suspicion. Desire, even in the form of hope, leads to suffering. Wanting things to be different than they are creates a cycle of longing that never ends. Hope, then, becomes a chain of something that pulls the mind away from presence and into illusion.⁵

Hope has a working class version too. The kind that clocks in early and stays late, not because it's noble, but because the rent doesn't care. It’s the kind of hope that says maybe this time the paycheck won’t bounce between bills. It’s not romantic. It’s not abstract. It’s the quiet calculation in the back of your mind that says, Keep showing up. Keep grinding. Because the alternative is nothing. This kind of hope smells like oil, ink, and brunt coffee. It shows up in steel toed boots and worn gloves. In the busted knuckles of mechanics, in the sore wrists of warehouse night crews, in the silence of truck cabs two states from home. It doesn’t ask for applause. It just mutters, Maybe next time, and punches back in. And still, somehow, it holds the line.

This kind of hope doesn’t sit in a temple. It waits behind a flickering computer screen, buried in paperwork, in a job you’re overqualified for and underpaid doing. It’s scraping dried paint off your hands before dinner, nursing a bad back from too many shifts on concrete floors, or checking your bank account at the gas pump hoping the card won’t decline. It's hearing your kid ask for something simple and swallowing the guilt when the answer has to be “not this week”.

And to some, hope is a scam. A dangling carrot. A drug handed out by people who already know the outcome. A polite way of saying “maybe” when the answer is already no. It’s what keeps people standing in lines, filling out forms, and waiting on systems that were never designed to lift them.

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The Shape of Hope

Hope isn't always some noble force rising from the ashes. Sometimes, it shows up in the most ordinary places, just enough to keep you from unraveling completely.

Sometimes it’s that feeling in a hospital waiting room, when you know the doctor is about to say something that could split your world in two. But still, you whisper to yourself, Maybe it’s not as bad as I think. Maybe they’re okay. And you cling to that sliver, because without it, you’d fall apart right there in that vinyl chair.

Or it’s the late night phone call, the kind that punches a hole in your gut before you even answer. You see the name, an old friend you haven’t talked to in years, and still, you pick up, hoping it’s not that call. That maybe, just this once, it’s not the news of another life senselessly lost.

Or it’s the quiet moment in traffic, watching flashing lights up ahead. You hope that it’s not someone you know, so the pain can stay distant and faceless instead of crawling into your passenger seat.

Hope walks with you when logic has already left the room. It’s the echo in your chest saying wait when every part of your brain is screaming run.

And in the moments where chaos isn’t metaphorical, where bullets fly, where decisions are made in milliseconds, hope becomes something even quieter. Something you’re not even allowed to speak aloud. You hope the kid around the corner doesn’t raise a weapon. You hope he pauses. That he hesitates. That maybe, just maybe, he’s not looking to die that day, and neither are you. Because neither of you wants to be there. Not really. And both of you know what happens if that moment tips the wrong way. No redo. No second chance. Just consequences that echo long after the smoke clears.

That kind of hope isn’t pretty. It’s not poetic. It’s real. It’s the barely whispered secret that says, Just hold on a little longer, even when you don’t know what you’re holding on for. Hope doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it’s the breath you manage to take right before your world splits wide open.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

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Hopelessness

A long time ago I was an instructor at a SERE⁶ school, hopelessness was an important part of the mental side of training. Hopelessness, in the context of SERE training, is not just a feeling but a psychological threshold that marks the beginning of mental collapse. It often manifests when a person perceives no control over their situation and no foreseeable end to their suffering. During resistance training scenarios, individuals are intentionally placed under extreme duress: sensory deprivation, isolation, manipulated time, and physical discomfort to simulate captivity or survival behind enemy lines.

Hopelessness creeps in when the mind begins to accept captivity or death as inevitabilities rather than challenges to be overcome. Instructors observe this shift as a degradation of will: slumped posture, silence, failure to follow simple instructions, or emotional detachment. This state is dangerous because it signals surrender of the mind, even if the body continues. The curriculum teaches that hope is not blind optimism but a tool, manufactured deliberately by finding purpose, remembering loved ones, or relying on internal discipline. Those who survive the worst often don’t do so because they are the strongest, but because they refuse to give up control of their mind.

But hopelessness doesn’t always come in the form of captivity or a broken body. Sometimes it’s quieter, more subtle. It wears a smile and calls itself reinvention. You can also define hope by when people lose it. One of the easiest ways to see this? Just climb aboard the dopamine slot machine. Scroll a bit and you’ll find someone from the UK solemnly announcing that Britain is “broken” and they’re off to Australia to start fresh. Keep scrolling and, like clockwork, an Australian appears, fed up with their crumbling society and booking it straight to the UK. Right behind them is an American begging for a Canadian visa, desperate to escape what they’re convinced is a dying empire. And of course, a Canadian pops up not long after, trying to jump ship to Europe because Canada’s circling the drain. Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Norway, people from every corner of Europe are suddenly packing their bags for places like Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, or Argentina. Apparently, every homeland is the worst place on Earth and everyone else has it figured out.

By the time you reach the bottom of that rabbit hole, it looks less like global migration and more like the entire human race trying to switch seats on a sinking ship. The irony is almost poetic. Hope, in this context, isn’t the light in the darkness, it’s the flashlight being tossed between hands by people refusing to admit the bulb is dead. What they’ve really lost is hope in their own ability to fix what’s broken. Hopelessness doesn’t always look like someone curled in a ball, it can wear a passport and hold a one way ticket.

The tragedy is that if even a fraction of that desperation was funneled into resilience, into doing the hard, thankless work of staying and improving what’s salvageable, the future might not look so grim. But hey, who am I to judge? They say they’re leaving in the hopes of a better life, better job, better future for their family. I just hope, truly, that their hope wasn’t sold to them by the same people who built the cages they’re trying to flee.

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Two Philosophical Faces of Hope

Hope isn’t neutral. It’s not soft, no matter how many greeting cards or coffee mugs try to dress it up. Hope has weight. It has edges. Sometimes it saves. Sometimes it destroys. It's both the bandage and the blade.

Charles Bukowski once wrote, “That’s all a man needs: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.”⁷

Bukowski wasn’t peddling optimism. He wasn’t preaching some sanitized version of faith. He was a barroom prophet, the kind of man who bled ink and smoke across napkins and dive bar tables. Hope, it seems to him, wasn’t some shiny beacon. It was the thread you clung to with shaking hands when everything else had broken. The last fuse in a blown circuit. Not because it lit up the room, but because it stopped the whole thing from going dark.

This is the kind of hope you find in places no one wants to look: prison yards, halfway houses, detox clinics, emergency rooms at 2 a.m. It doesn’t inspire speeches. It doesn’t sound poetic. It just says, “Not yet. Not today.” That’s enough. Because if it’s not there, the descent gets meaner. Faster. More final.

Then Nietzsche enters, cold and surgical, with a line that cuts without flinching: “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”⁸

I don’t think he was trying to crush dreams for the thrill of it, but I could be mistaken. I believe he was offering a warning. Nietzsche saw hope as a sedative, a dangerous delay that keeps people shackled to false futures. To him, hope was the lie whispered by tyrants, lovers, bosses, and priests. The whisper that says, “Stay a little longer, suffer a little more, maybe it’ll all make sense soon.”

But it never does. Hope, in that lens, isn’t a light, it’s the leash. It keeps you docile when you should be defiant. Waiting when you should be walking. Drowning in the dream of something better instead of burning down the thing that's killing you.

Where Bukowski clings to hope like a cigarette in a rainstorm, Nietzsche spits it out like poison disguised as sugar. Two truths. Two wounds. Both forged in suffering. Both circling the same question:

Is hope a weapon we carry into the dark or the chain that keeps us standing still, waiting for someone else to save us?

It’s not just philosophy. It’s personal. The answer changes depending on where you're standing when the fire comes. Are you gripping hope like a shield or wearing it like a noose?

Sometimes, it’s both.

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My Relationship With Hope

Hope was never a friend to me. Not when I needed it most.

When I was young, it showed up like a quiet liar, dressed in dreams, promises, and expectations. It whispered that if I worked hard, followed the rules, kept my head down, things would eventually work out. It never screamed. It didn’t need to. It just watched while life broke me, one silent disappointment at a time.

Every time I hoped for something better without backing it with action, I gave away pieces of myself. And when it all fell apart, I didn’t blame hope, I blamed me. I told myself I was weak, naive. That if I’d just been stronger or more patient, maybe the hope would’ve held.

But it didn’t. And the ghosts it left behind still echo in the quiet moments. They show up as shame, whispering in the corners of my mind: “Remember that time? You were stupid to believe in that.” False hope doesn’t just fade. It leaves stains. It poisons future chances, even when they’re real.

And yet, there are moments where hope didn’t lie to me. It didn’t offer comfort. It didn’t promise I’d be okay. It simply stood beside me like a cold hand on my shoulder and said, “This may not end well. But you’re not done yet.”

That’s when I stumbled into the old Norse stories. Not doctrine. Not holy text. Just shards of a worldview scattered through sagas, retold a thousand different ways. So I don’t pretend to know exactly what they believed. But I know what I took from it.

They didn’t romanticize hope. They didn’t wait around for mercy. If they had hope, it wasn’t the kind sold on bumper stickers and church billboards. It was sharp. It was brutal. It was action over wishing. If the end was coming, they faced it standing. Axe in hand. No begging. No fantasy. No pretending.

That makes sense to me.

I’m not a pagan. I don’t follow any gods or god. I don’t need myths to feel brave or rituals to feel grounded. But that kind of raw defiance? That speaks to something in my bones. Because that version of hope doesn’t ask you to fake it. It doesn’t ask you to kneel or smile while it guts you.

It just says: This is going to hurt. Stand anyway.

And that, I can do.

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Just a Spark

There was a time a new kind of hope showed up for my wife and I, quietly, but just in time.

We were still stationed in Hawaii, still wearing the weight of uniforms, still living under the rhythm of orders and the security active duty provided. But the end was closing in. I was about to retire, and for the first time in two decades, I had no map. No unit. No mission. Just a question mark stretching in every direction.

We didn’t know where we were going to live. Didn’t know how we were going to make it. I had no job lined up. No real plan, just a possibility of making furniture. No real idea if I’d ever feel useful again. The world outside was unraveling, still deep in the fog of a global pandemic and the fear in the air wasn’t just headlines. It was in the grocery store lines, the empty streets, the masked conversations. And it was in our silence too.

One night, we sat in the driveway after the kids had finally gone to sleep. Just the two of us. The warm air heavy with everything we weren’t saying out loud. Headlights from passing cars swept over the vehicles parked in our base housing neighborhood like quiet reminders that life keeps moving, even when yours feels stuck.

We were talking, but mostly we were just holding space for what we couldn’t fix. The fear. The weight. The terrifying freedom of a future that suddenly had no structure and no safety net. Just two people on the edge of a new life, hoping they still remembered how to walk.

And then, as if the indifferent universe knew we needed something, anything, lyrics from a song playing on a random Pandora station, cracked through the noise in our heads.

“I don't even know myself at all. I thought I would be happy by now…”

It hit like a gut punch. Haley Williams, from the top rope. No buildup, no mercy. That first line landed and everything got still.

“…the more I try to push it, I realize I gotta let go of control.”

We looked at each other, not in shock, but in recognition. That song didn’t just play. It translated everything we hadn’t been able to say. It didn’t offer a fix. It didn’t try to be profound. It just lit a match.

That was it. We didn’t need the whole fire. We didn’t need some grand vision of the future to fall into place. We just needed one flicker. One breath. Something small and real that reminded us we were still here. Still trying. Still alive.

Hope didn’t save us. It didn’t fix anything overnight. It didn’t make the fear go away.

“And when it's dark out and no one's around, it keeps glowing.”

That night became more than just a moment. It became a vow. A quiet anthem. A thread to hold us when everything else felt like it was coming apart. We weren’t chasing perfection. We weren’t looking for guarantees. We just needed to believe that the spark was real, that if we kept moving, maybe it would catch.

“Every night I try my best to dream tomorrow makes it better. And wake up to the cold reality and not a thing has changed…”

But we were still here. Still trying. Still alive.

That’s when hope isn’t a trap. When it’s not a lie or a buzzword. When it becomes something stubborn and quiet that refuses to leave.

“The salt in my wounds isn’t burning any more than it used to… it’s not that I don’t feel the pain, it’s just I’m not afraid of hurting anymore.”

That’s when you know hope isn’t pretending. It’s enduring. And even now, when life’s louder than ever and nothing feels promised, that lyric still sits in our chests like an ember.

“It’s just a spark, but it’s enough to keep me going.”⁹

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A Final Word on Hope

Whatever keeps you going in your struggle, whatever carries you through the nights when nothing else makes sense, I genuinely hope it holds. I hope it stays true to your path. I hope it doesn’t lie to you. I hope it doesn’t wrap itself in false promises or drag you away from your own peace.

Because that’s the worst kind of betrayal. Not the kind that comes from the outside, but the kind that starts within. When you believe in something so completely that you forget to ask if it was ever yours to begin with. When you hold on so tightly to an outcome, or a person, or a belief, that you lose yourself in the grip.

If it’s faith that keeps you upright, good. If it’s a routine, a ritual, or a rhythm, keep it. If it’s something softer, like a line in a song or the feel of your child’s hand in yours, that counts too. Just make sure it’s real. Make sure it walks beside you, not in front of you. Make sure it doesn’t cost you the parts of yourself you can’t afford to give away.

Let it be a choice. Let it be honest. Let it hold weight, not illusion.

And now, I’ll leave you with my final take. Not a doctrine, not a lesson, just one man’s truth after walking through fire:

Hope is not an action. It’s an emotion. It can light a spark, but it won’t build the fire. And when the outcome is something you can shape, don’t sit back hoping it appears, go shape it. Do the work. Make the call. Take the risk. Get your hands dirty.

And if it doesn’t work out? Good. That means you learned. That means you lived. That means you didn’t sit quietly waiting for someone else to carry your load or save your soul. You get to write the next chapter. You get to decide what happens now.

Because, say it with me now, no one is coming.

And that’s not a threat. That’s not a tragedy. That’s freedom.

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1. Al-Ghazālī, A. H. M. (1995). The ninety-nine beautiful names of God (D. B. Burrell & N. Daher, Trans.). Islamic Texts Society. (Original work published ca. 1100), for a discussion on rajaa as a form of spiritual hope and supplication in Islamic theology.

2. Eagleton, T. (2015). Hope without optimism. University of Virginia Press.

3. Naito, T. (2004). Japanese psychology: A cultural perspective. In U. Kim, K.-S. Yang, & K.-K. Hwang (Eds.), Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context (pp. 373–391). Springer.

4. Larrington, C. (Trans.). (2014). The Poetic Edda (Rev. ed.). Oxford University Press. The Norse poems emphasize fate (wyrd), honor, and courage in the face of inevitable death, often portraying hope as futile unless accompanied by resolve and action.

5. Rahula, W. (1974). What the Buddha taught (Rev. ed.). Grove Press.

6. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. It is a rigorous military training program designed to prepare personnel for high risk capture scenarios. The course teaches service members how to survive in hostile environments, evade enemy forces, resist exploitation if captured, and escape captivity. SERE training is considered one of the most mentally and physically demanding programs in the U.S. military and is required for certain special operations forces, aircrew, and other at risk roles.

7. Bukowski, C. (2002). Factotum. Ecco.

8. Nietzsche, F. (1996). Human, all too human: A book for free spirits (R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1878)

9. Paramore. (2013). Last Hope. On Paramore [Album]. Fueled By Ramen. Used with respect and admiration.