" The most important thing....is to have something to look forward to...."

Nearly a decade back, at the time when I still used to post thoughts linked to my state of mind/ feelings etc on social media ( kind of restarting to now), I had in one of my posts mentioned " The most important thing....is to have something to look forward to...."

It remains one of the most succinct, yet profoundly true, statement that I have ever thought or posted ( ok I am exaggerating here but you get the drift)

If you had to pick two emotions that probably influence each one of us, it is that of hope and fear. 

It is funny how the two emotions work in kind of opposite ways.

Fear of something often turns out much worse than that "something" itself.  Many a time, you deliberate on how bad something could turn out to be, keep mulling over it, agonizing , and then it happens, and what you particularly feared turned out not that bad as you imagined. 

Hope is just the opposite. As the line in Shawshank Redemption goes "Hope is a good thing, may be it is the best of things, and no good thing ever dies". But the even better thing about hope is this, the process of hoping can often be better than the actual event itself! ( It is another matter that shattered hopes, or delusions brought home to reality can often make one feel terrible)

People say that having "nothing to lose" can be liberating. Your fears reduce and you start to discover possibilities that may have earlier been viewed with trepidation. 

Yet, "nothing to lose" is not good enough in itself. Lets be honest, if we are in a "nothing to lose" situation, it means the shit has already hit the roof. True, you can pick up your pieces and make do with your fear etc....but there's one thing you still need: HOPE, something to look forward to , something to gain.

And if that's missing, then its really difficult. "Nothing to lose" with "Nothing to gain" is a pretty bad combo. You then miss an anchor and can become almost rudderless....

And so " The most important thing....is to have something to look forward to...."





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