Interesting question. I suppose it's case-dependent. Do you get any positive things out of hoping? If either hoping or not hoping could lead to success or to failure in equal likelihood, which I suspect but don't know, then it doesn't really matter, and you can do whichever you want. Most of the time hoping is fun and time-occupying, and helps prepare you for when IT might happen. Not hoping can help avoid periodic let-downs, but it seems less engaged with potential realities to me.
Maybe there are more complexitites to consider. Type of hoping, for instance. It's possible that when you hope for the ideal, you fail to fully consider the lovably (or at least tolerably) flawed? Oftentimes our ideals are ill-informed or unrealistic anyway - we picture a superficial representation of what we think we want, when real experience can change that. Maybe when most people "stop hoping", really what they do more of is trying new avenues that depart from their predetermined ideal, and then they realize that there are other ideals that will work.
Or, less ideally, maybe when you "stop hoping", you just realize that if the dream isn't happening then you may as well come to grips with the fact that you're bored. And we all know how fun something stupid and different can be when we're bored. I don't play board games in my ideal world. Don't really care for them. But when the alternative is awkward silences or an early night, and alcohol is involved, I'm not sure there's anything better. Apart from sex of course. I have always assumed that this was the thought process for some people settling down. And I don't think they are any more likely to fail than a pairing of "ideal" people. I bet living with an "ideal" can really be depressing sometimes - no one is ACTUALLY ideal.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterfish
no subject
Date: 2006-11-27 03:38 pm (UTC)Maybe there are more complexitites to consider. Type of hoping, for instance. It's possible that when you hope for the ideal, you fail to fully consider the lovably (or at least tolerably) flawed? Oftentimes our ideals are ill-informed or unrealistic anyway - we picture a superficial representation of what we think we want, when real experience can change that. Maybe when most people "stop hoping", really what they do more of is trying new avenues that depart from their predetermined ideal, and then they realize that there are other ideals that will work.
Or, less ideally, maybe when you "stop hoping", you just realize that if the dream isn't happening then you may as well come to grips with the fact that you're bored. And we all know how fun something stupid and different can be when we're bored. I don't play board games in my ideal world. Don't really care for them. But when the alternative is awkward silences or an early night, and alcohol is involved, I'm not sure there's anything better. Apart from sex of course. I have always assumed that this was the thought process for some people settling down. And I don't think they are any more likely to fail than a pairing of "ideal" people. I bet living with an "ideal" can really be depressing sometimes - no one is ACTUALLY ideal.