To Hope Means To Go Beyond Belief

Redefining hope as more than believing in a better future.

Ancient Greek mythology tells the tale of Pandora’s Box. The gods wanted to punish humans for stealing fire. So, they presented humanity with a box that must never be opened. In our curiosity, we opened the box and released evil spirits into the world: the spirits of death, disease, greed, rage, and more. The once perfect human race was plagued with mortality. However, we closed the box before the last spirit escaped: the spirit of Hope.

The story explains why we are plagued by disease and devastation and, more importantly, tells us how to overcome them: through hope. We describe hope as the sun that rises to dispel the night, a candle that guides us through the dark, and the light at the end of the tunnel. As Desmond Tutu, an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”

From these metaphors, it’s obvious that we equate hope with optimism: believing that our life will get better, no matter how difficult it is right now. Even the first Google search result for hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.”

However, if just wanting something to happen was enough, we wouldn’t have wars or poverty. If all we needed to do was just imagine, then there wouldn’t be people dying due to starvation and disease. If just wanting the world to be perfect was enough, then there wouldn’t be discrimination based on colour, ethnicity, or gender. Just having desire isn’t enough. Belief just isn’t enough. 

The spirit left behind in Pandora’s box isn’t just a belief– it isn’t a fantasy. Hope is something real and tangible that leads to change and growth. Hope goes beyond believing to achieve our goals. 

The Power of Belief

In sports, top-level athletes often use visualization to reach their best performance. Emily Cook, a three-time Olympic freestyle skier, describes how she would visualize her perfect jump before events: what steps she needed to take, how they should feel, and what the results should be.  

Each time an athlete pictures themselves giving a perfect performance, their brain becomes more accustomed to perfection. In other words, athletes’ belief that they can execute their event perfectly increases each time they do visualization training.

From the success of visualization training, one fact becomes evident: to reach a goal, you need to imagine a reality where you reach that goal. Seeing such a possibility is essential, because only then can you move on to the next step.

When we explain Cook’s visualization of a perfect jump, we can see she doesn’t just picture a perfect jump. She visualizes all the steps she needs to reach that reality. Thus, to attain our goal, we must picture a concrete path to our goal.

Redefining Hope

Dr. Chan Hellman, director of The Hope Research Center, defines hope as the “belief your future will be better than today, and that you have the power to make it so.” The most important difference between Hellman’s definition and our colloquial understanding is the addition that we believe we have the power to improve our futures. It changes our understanding of hope as a passive action to an active action. 

To understand this, we will examine what Hellman defines as the three major tenets of hope: goals, pathways and willpower. Our goals represent what we need to make our future better. We set our goals to match what we need to survive and thrive. Pathways represent the steps we need to take to attain our goals. Finally, willpower represents our motivation to traverse that pathway. It represents the strength and energy we need to complete the steps needed to reach our goals. 

Just believing we will attain a goal is a passive process. However, to truly believe that you can attain that goal, you need to identify a pathway to reach that goal and trust that you have the willpower to follow that pathway. 

Returning to our example of Emily Cook, we can see that hope is an active process. Her experience doing perfect jumps and training as an Olympian gives her enough confidence in her willpower to follow the pathway she created. 

To hope means to consistently reflect upon how to reach your goal and develop yourself to make sure you reach that goal. 

To Act

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,” is one of author Paulo Coelho’s most famous quotes. However, I believe that quote isn’t quite accurate. It should be more like, “When you want something, you truly believe that you can get that something, and you work towards it with all your willpower, then all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.” 

Even after all the discussion of going beyond belief, in the end, we still define hope as a belief. However, hope is not merely the belief that things will be better. Hope is the belief that things will be better because you have the ability to make them better. You may be wondering, if hope is just a belief, then how does it solve the world’s problems? You’re right– it doesn’t.

The spirit inside Pandora’s box couldn’t solve the world’s problems. It gave us the ability to create a better future. Hope gives us the courage and strength to counter the problems of the world on our own and change our current situation with our own hands. 

Many times, in our lives, we feel powerless to change ourselves and the situation we are in. We wish to be better people and get to a better place, but it’s like we are in a pit we cannot escape. However, it’s possible to leave that pit. As long as you are willing to hope—as long as you are willing to look at yourself and work on yourself—you can take control of your life. You can create your own future.