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"