Hope

n.a feeling of expectation and desire
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.", "Hope springs eternal" etc etc. I'm sure you would have heard a lot of other quotes on hope. The question is hope what it claims to be? I'd like to talk about three very different scenarios and the different manifestations of hope in the respective scenarios.

The Good
This is the default definition of hope, the one which all of us are familiar with. The exact feeling which made Vasco da Gama change the name of 'Cape of Storms' to 'Cape of Good Hope'. That is when the events occurring in the future happen regardless of what your action are, the only thing you can do is hope. This has to be the good part cos, sometimes things work out the way you want them to sometimes they don't, but you are ready for whatever comes your way.

The Bad
Consider a student who's not written an exam particularly well and is hoping to pass. Fast forward to the results, if he passes well and good. If he doesn't then he's miserable for quite sometime cursing himself, with disapproval from teachers, parents (and in some cases friends too!) alike. Next time around he'll never be the same. So now do we say hope is a bad thing?

The Ugly
To fully explore the darker side of hope consider a scenario:
There are two families, perfectly normal and happy with the way things are going. Unfortunately both of their daughters are kidnapped on a particularly bad day. After a few days one of the girls is found to be dead, the other girl's whereabouts are unknown.
Everyone's sympathies are with the family who has just lost their girl and the other family has hope, they are hoping that their daughter is still alive. Fast-forward a few years, the family who lost their daughter would have moved on with their lives, there will be pain, but they would have come to terms with the truth of what had happened.
Imagine the state of the other family, they don't want to lose hope they want their child to be alive, they probably haven't moved a single object in her room, every time the parents see a child of their daughter's age they'd think "Could this be our child?", think about the state of mind of the parents, for all we know this child could be dead too, but they don't want to accept that. They want to believe that their child is still alive.
Compare the two families, we accept that there is no 'happy' family, but arguably we could say that the family who know of their child's death is blessed.
The scenario is entirely fictitious and has a very low chance of occurrence, I used it to just show that 'hope' is not a rosy picture.
What's your view on hope now? Do you look at it as something which paralyzes you? Is it something which prevents you from moving on?

Now for an insight into the three scenarios.

The Good
This is the scenario which defines hope as it was truly meant to be. Hope is just a good feeling about the future, no strings attached.

The Bad
Though I said that hope is a good feeling, you should know what you are hoping for. In this case, the student is hoping for luck. Now luck is not something which anyone should rely on. Luck is nature's perfect random function. So if you are just hoping that you get lucky the odds will always be against you.

The Ugly

Fear n. a feeling of dread and reverence

Yes, the feelings experienced in the ugly scenario is fear. Fear is the anti-particle of hope. Fear is just hope mixed with negativity. Hope was never meant to paralyze anyone, if there was one perfectly good thing in the universe it has to be hope.
If the feeling which the parents were experiencing was hope, then they'd know when to let go. But since that wasn't the case, it has to be fear, when you don't want to do something because something can change (for the worse of course.) due to your actions. In the scenario fear has successfully plotted the downfall of the two individuals (the parents) and what's worse if the individuals themselves were responsible for the creation of their nemesis.

Hoping is never a wrong thing to do, unless there is something which you can do to improve your chances of attaining your goal. When you know that things aren't going your way then you must learn to let go otherwise you are allowing fear to take control and everything is downhill from that point. I think this is precisely what made Dr. Gregory House says, "Hope is for sissies". But I beg to differ, "Hope is for everyone, the ones refusing to let go are sissies"

Definitions

Blog’s name:
There were a lot of candidates to start with. First I thought of was “Deep Thought” (After the supercomputer in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy). Then there was "Confessions of a not-so-dangerous mind". It sounded original, but when it comes to the actual contents of the blog there would be nothing even close to a 'confession' and the phrase 'not-so-dangerous' sounded a little self-depreciating (Okay now I'm pushing it). Practically, the name was too long and didn’t carry any inner meaning as such, so that was discarded. Next I landed on “Blogical Thinking”, I'm pretty sure that I am not the first to think of 'blogical', but then I got tired of thinking of another name and hence the name of my blog. I just tinkered with it for a little and made it “Blogically Speaking..”. Ok enough said about the name.
Screen name: “M” is not a fancy title neither is it inspired from James Bond. It is only my initial.

Display Picture:
(This portion of the post is subject to change)
The display picture is something abstract, you should open your Inner Eye to see what it truly holds, the picture when you fully understand it will never cease to amaze you.
Only joking, it is actually a pitcher plant seen under the microscope.

Contents:
What you can expect out of the blog:
• Random Topics (I mean completely random topics)
• Vague Metaphors
• Totally unrelated topics in the same post (sometimes in the same line)

History:
Long time coming, It took me a little more than an year to create a blog. I planned on starting it from January 1,2009 but I was a little apprehensive, you know things sound much better in your head than they actually are. So after some serious contemplation and a lot of time, I’m finally here.

I guess I'm done defining my blog. You'll probably be thinking "What was the point again?!". Makes me wonder too I have just written a blog whose contents define the blog itself, which makes it dull, boring and completely useless. Then again a definition is necessary to understand anything. I think I can come up with something better next time around, for now I’m signing off.