Too Much Hope

Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

Photo by Hamish Duncan on Unsplash

Are you overdosing on hopium? Hope is more than a periodical campaign slogan, it’s the yearning for something to happen. Have you ever wanted something to happen so bad? Have you ever wanted something to happen so badly even though the facts on the ground said it was never going to happen? That’s hope. Sometimes however, yearning and expecting for something to happen against all odds can do more harm than good.

The Bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for. Faith is the raw material of hope. You can’t hope without faith. Faith is an ideological sense of self that lives in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of your brain. When you “hope too much” you are straining, stressing, and exerting yourself in a way that could have negative health implications. Imagine wanting something so bad and it never happens but you continue to hope for it; you’re essentially working against yourself. This type of behavior could potentially lead to anxiety, depression, lethargy, and or illness.