Don't Get Your Hopes Up

Don't get your hopes up. Don't bet on the Dodgers in the post-season.

When did it become a vice to hope for the improbable? Hope is such a great concept. It's something that keeps people going when they're in desperate times. We embrace hope as this vague altruistic concept that energizes children in third-world countries and prisoners of war. But when it comes to hoping for something tangible in "real" life, you know, in the good ol' "American Dream" life, it's silly to get one's hopes up. It almost becomes juvenile, laughable.

Why???

I talk to myself saying "Don't get your hopes up." I say it to myself in the mirror, or as I begin to drift into a dreamworld of what-ifs.

What if we get the house?

What if I'm pregnant?

What if we got out of debt?

What if...

Yeah. Don't get your hopes up. I hear it in my head, sometimes in voices of friends and family, and sometimes just in my own. I can't help but think that there has to be more... that sometimes when you "get your hopes up" it's that much sweeter when the dreams really do come true.