Hope

Hope is future oriented, a desire for that which is not yet present and the anticipation that this future will be positive or at least better than both the past and the present. In contemporary language, hope is considered to be an attitude or feeling, closely aligned with optimism or even wishful thinking, implying that things hoped for are out of one’s control but nonetheless possible. In many religious traditions, hope is an expression of trust in God or the forces of the universe and, in this worldview, hope extends beyond the span of individual mortal life. Whilst this religious articulation of hope has an ultimate orientation towards the afterlife, on earth, children embody the continuation of intergenerational human life. The colloquial cliché ‘children are ...