I just spotted this thread after not seeing it around for quite awhile. I think what many people don't realize is that "hope" isn't always just about whether or not the issue is something like job or financial success. Sometimes, as you say, people struggle with things that truly have nothing to do with attitude or any of the other things people tend to think are the problem when someone talks about hope in general.
One example I was thinking of was my mother when she was bedridden before passing away. She had become resigned to the idea that she wasn't likely to get better. I, on the other hand, kept wishing she'd stop talking as if she was so resigned. Also, I kept having hope that she might get better. So (even though I didn't say anything to her about what I saw as "inappropriate giving up"), inside I kept my hope that she may get better. That laid the foundation on which so many choices and interactions were built. It would have been better for her had I not been so stuck on the idea of always keeping hope myself, and kind of wishing she'd keep it herself as well. She could have used someone who was more in touch with the reality that she, herself, knew was, in fact, reality. My hope was essentially the naive hope of a grown up "little girl" who just needed to believe there was the chance her mother would get better.
So, although I was kind and tried to be supportive in so many ways; the fact is I could have been more supportive and made her feel as if I was more "ready" to deal with her illness if I hadn't remained that naive little girl who (if only in that situation) somehow couldn't shake the naive idea that hope is the most important thing for people to always have.
My mother eventually lost her two feet, and even then I kept hoping there would be a way for her to come home, live "OK enough" (if we found the right mobility aids etc.), and "we'd all live mostly happily ever after, once the matter of her pain had been taken care of.
Infection set in. It was clear she was going to die. I still kept up hope. She came home to die, but she was actually doing reasonably well vital-signs wise and eating-wise - so I actually kind of had a hope in the back of my mind that she just wouldn't die (even with gangrene, which by that time was on both of the surgery sites). Between having hope and seeing that she was dying as soon as expected to die, I just kind of kept having that hope. In fact, it was almost getting to be something I was starting to feel a little more confident in believing.
Well, of course, I found that she had "gone" a couple of weeks after she came home to die; and I realized if I'd been able to accept what she had been able to accept all along, I could have been better support to her; but I also might have done a few things that people might like to do before someone, like a mother, dies.
On another kind of matter, I know someone who works at a company that has announced it will close its doors. His co-worker keeps acting as if he believes the company isn't going out of business, and he may still be working at his long-term job indefinitely. This guy (the co-worker) is big for reading about self-improvement and positive attitude and all that kind of stuff. My friend would also like the company to stay open, but it's already been announced that the company is closing. This guy (the co-worker) can hang onto his hope that some miracle will happen with the business (business decisions usually don't involve being turned out with miracles), and not prepare for what he'll do once the doors are closed; or else he could accept what he's been told by the people involved in the decision-making and responsibility for the money/prophet end of things, and start planning now. He'll be like I was when my mother went - shocked in spite of having some very, very, solid reason to know that - no - there was absolutely no real reason to have hope.
onegoodwoman, you put it perfectly. "Sometimes, we really do lose the inning..". A good part of the time, too, we can see the score that gives us a pretty good idea that we're going to lose it. Also, though, losing an inning isn't always about how we play or what we do or even whether we have good luck. Sometimes someone else cheats. Sometimes the umpires of the world make bad calls. Sometimes, there may even be someone (or a few "someones") who bash us in the knees with the bat, and then take the ball and run off the field with hit.
Oh - I'm one of the biggest ones in the world for positive attitude and hope. Just yesterday morning my daughter called to tell me her cat (already diagnosed as not expected to live through the night) had become so obviously close to death she needed to bring her to the vet to end her pain. The drive is about a half-hour drive, and you know, I was still imagining how she'd get the cat there, the cat would kind of get back a little, and someone would decide she could tolerate treatment after all. About an hour later my daughter called to tell me she was leaving the vets, and the cat was gone.
It's not always a matter of illness or death, though. There are times when circumstances actually do result in a person's very much having his "hands tied". Maybe it happens more when someone has family responsibilities or children. Maybe it happens more if a person finds himself in a game that's being played by mostly cheaters, rather than by people who play fairly. It does happen. People do find themselves with "their hands tied" (at least for awhile, and sometimes for longer than it would take if their hands weren't tied (by any number of different sets of circumstances). I still say if a person knows he's lost that inning, or if he's sitting in the middle of the field with his hands and feet tied; it isn't supportive or helpful to have others suggest he develop a better attitude in order to get himself out of his pickle. If he's clever or strong or otherwise skilled at Houdini-like maneuvers there's a chance he'll figure out how to get out of that pickle he's in. It won't, however, be a matter of simply improving his thinking. Yes, the right attitude will keep him trying to get free, but if whoever/whatever has tied his hands has done a good enough job that he can't get free, all the trying in the world isn't going to cut it.
The most disturbing thing about how so many people don't seem to understand how some of those innings can be lost, or how some people's hands can actually be tied; is that unless/until they understand better, they'll keep on implying that the person "in a pickle" is in it as a result of his own inferior attitude. That's not only misguided. It's cruel in a way. People don't like to believe that there can actually be times when a person's hands are tied through no fault of his own. It's less frightening to believe that all pickles are the result of inferior attitude and can therefore be fixed with a simple attitude adjustment. Oh - were the biggest and most difficult struggles in life as easy to deal with as so many people need to believe they are.
Yes - a good thing to do is to sometimes to change strategy in order to stay in the game. Sometimes, too, though, all that person on the field, with his hands and feet tied, can do is duck his head as best he can and hope nothing else happens before the weather rots the ropes enough that he can get himself free.
Not a very hopeful post, I know (and - believe me - I'm a master of hope, persistence, and even accomplishment against all odds). I think people need to know, though, that it can sometimes be OK and positive NOT to have hope when there is no reason to have any.
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