Hope - the essence of life

Depiya Thoudam *

I could not recall how many times I have watched this movie “Shawshank Redemption” (1994, directed by Frank Darabont. It never ceases to entertain me every time I watch it. For those who have watched this movie would definitely say that it is indeed a good movie and for those who have not I hereby suggest to give it a try, you will not regret doing so.

This movie revolves around the story of a banker named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) who is sentenced to life imprisonment in so called Shawshank Prison on the charge of murdering her wife and her lover despite his claims of innocence and how he successfully escaped the prison through the prison sewage pipe.

Yes Andy is a smart guy and things actually do work out for smart people. I would not deny the fact that he could escaped the prison because he is smart. But, so is his hopefulness attitude. It is his hope that makes him to do what his other prison inmates think is impossible and unthinkable.

At the end of the movie, when Andy could finally escaped from the prison after spending almost 20 years, he addressed a letter to his prison friend Red (Morgan Freeman) saying “hope is a good thing, maybe the best things and no good thing ever dies”.

Hope is an optimistic state of mind; it is an expectation of positive outcomes. Yes, we should be hopeful. Our life is not a bed of roses, even if you somehow manage to get a bed made of roses, mind it, roses do have thorns.

We have our own goals in life, we work for them, we sweat for them, and sometimes we even bum the midnight oil to achieve them. In doing so, in the process, we do fail but we don’t stop there. It is hope that drives us to try again and again until we succeed or achieve the goals.

We all know that life can get quite notorious at times, things going out of hand and beyond our control. When this hard time strikes our life, some people who are not hopeful do give up. Well, this is when we should cling on to hope even more tightly.

Hope is the essence of life that very much decides the course or the route you choose for your journey of life. Hope makes you to stand up every time you fall. Hope is the light in the dark. Hope is the one that says that tomorrow is going to be great though you are all messed up today and let you sleep peacefully and with the energy and willingness to wake up in the morning tomorrow.

In the movie, Red warned Andy saying “Hope is a dan¬gerous thing and it can drive man crazy”. Yes, hope can be dangerous too if it is misplaced. We all know things some¬times do not happen the way we are hoping and we ended in disappointment and experienced heartsick feeling. Mis¬placed hope can pull you down so low and steal your joy.

It can drain out your energy to carry on your life to the fullest. It can kill the optimistic outlook you have that fuels every mission or work of yours forever. So we need to be really careful of how and where we place our hopes. No doubt, life is so unpredictable and I think it is what makes life even more interesting and adventurous.

In this unpredictable life if you are placing you hope on only one particular outcome saying if it happens only in this particular way, I would be happy or successful when thousands other out¬comes are possible, then you misplacing your hope.

This can be really dangerous. One should hope wisely taking into consideration every aspects and possibilities and actually working hard to realise what we are hoping for.

In life, being successful is not just achieving your goals or things working the exact same way you were hoping it to be.

For me success is state of mind, a feeling rather where you heartedly accept the thinking that you have given your best in anything you do in your life no matter what the result is, whether you clear the exam or not, whether you win the game or not, whether you get the job or not etc. it is your realistic mind-set and properly placed hope that will sail you through this ocean full of storms and get you the shore of success and well lived life.