They say hope keeps us alive.

Good begets good.

Love makes the world go round.

There's God within each one of us.

Right.

Deep down, I guess, we all like to live in a fool's paradise.

Hold on to our favorite fallacies that seem to mitigate the trials and tribulations of our life.

Believe in seductive lies.

Like Hope, that colors the beholder's eyes.

An untruth perpetuated to rob every generation off it's pride.

A drug that offers an illusory escape in time. Rewards one's imagination for a while.

The balm that soothes that pain of being alive.

In almost every case, bandied to justify a miserable existence being passed off for a life.

In fact, Hope is only a by-product of a conflict inside. A consequence of the struggle between Man's wants and his powerlessness over the world he finds himself in.

Like Faith.

Both stem from Want.

Hope and Faith.

Two sides of the same coin.

Selective suspension of one's own faculty of thought.

Hope is active anticipation.

It consoles.

Faith is passive anticipation.

It cajoles.

Both are a sub-conscious desire to mould metaphysical reality according to one's will.

But, as yet, magic is entertainment on earth not a way of life.

Hope is the luxury of the naïve optimists. The cotton-wool over every dreamer's eye.

Yet it is born only in a soul that desires.

Still maintains the statuesque of constructive engagement with life.

Not a privilege for spirits like you and I.

As a race, we don't want to feel anything anymore. It's a cruel world out there. We pray every day. We learn new ways. Always grateful that we feel less and less with each passing day. Maybe even proud sometimes.

If you want to know whether your prayers are answered, whether God exists, look inside.

Numbness is the sign.

A heart that's frozen cold before it dies gives no room for hope.

It is indifference that keeps it alive.

Inertia keeps it alive.

Stupidity and cowardice keep it alive.

Yet, even when a lie, Hope is a sublime notion.

Sublime is the enemy of our times.

It denies the comfort of existing without responsibility.

Destroys the luxury of sleepwalking through this continuum of space and time.

Nullifies the sensation of staying afloat without a design.

It demands awareness and a conscious mind.

Sublime is sacred. Divine.

Anti-Christ of our prosaic lives.

Sublime – it's a muffled scream that's extinguished before it can give shape to the anguish of Man's dying pride.

Vestiges of our history are scattered with corpses of sublime.

Incapacitated love of life. Greatness denied.

Hope is our ancestors indulgence of life. A dream someone else had a long time ago and cherished for a while. A fantastic love story that man repeats to warm his cockles in trying times.

Hope was, and is, a fool's paradise.