“Don’t lose hope.”

“Don’t give up.” “Things will work out sooner or later.” “Keep trying.”

These are things we keep telling ourselves when things aren’t working out.

This is how we motivate ourselves when we know things around us and within us are falling apart.

While hope is the one thing that we all need to get us through to the other side, sometimes, it becomes the very thing that keeps us stuck.

It keeps us captive in choices that aren’t serving us, relationships that are unfulfilling. It takes away the power of our own efforts as we pour all our energies into simply wishing and hoping that one day, things will improve.

The fact is that sometimes things don’t improve or cannot go beyond a point. We get blinded by our own hope and wishful thinking. Instead of living each day, we start wishing for that “one day” to come, when everything will be all right.

Sometimes, what we have in front of us, within us, is all that there is going to be.

We already have something that is complete within itself and cannot be changed or improved. We still delude ourselves into believing otherwise.

If we don’t, then we will have to force ourselves to make choices that we don’t have the courage and strength for.

We will have to face our inner demons—our fears, insecurities, vulnerabilities that lie beneath the surface, always pushing us to cover them up, with blind hope. A hope that’s already reached its dead end.

Sometimes, relationships don’t improve.

Sometimes, people don’t change.

Sometimes, the difficult circumstances will stay on.

With time, we adjust and compromise.

We let go of our dreams, aspirations, and expectations because that’s the burden we don’t have the strength to take.

Instead, we take on something that looks light on the outside and weighs heavily on the inside.

We trade our life for a life that we would like to believe is ours. When, in fact, it’s not.

What remains with us is a mere shadow of what we would want things to be like.

In reality, we allow ourselves to be disconnected from what’s true for us. What in totality belongs to us—our own joy, happiness, freedom, identity, choices, growth.

Sometimes, hope is not what we need.

Our own hope can destroy our peace.

As the hope extends, so does our dissatisfaction, frustration, and angst.

Before we realise it, our own hope becomes our blindfold through which we can’t see anything.

Sometimes, to be free, we need to kill our hope.

We need to see things as they are and not what we would like or hope them to be.

It’s only then can we give a direction to our hope, steer it toward possibilities that actually exist, and we can create those for ourselves, rather than waiting for someone else to give shape to our hopes.

Sometimes, to create hope, we need to take our blindfolds off.

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