I was watching the Rachel Maddow Show the other day and she was interviewing Senator Warnock from Georgia about the restrictive legislation just passed in his home State seriously restricting voting “rights”.
Rachel commented to the Senator that it must be difficult not to give up hope with all of the restrictive legislation being presented in Republican states.
Senator Warnock replied, “I didn’t say I was optimistic.”
This got me thinking as I really did not consider the difference between being hopeful and being optimistic.
In fact, I always thought that “hopeful” and “optimistic” were basically the same.
And, when I googled the two, that is what I found. Optimism and hopeful are listed as synonyms.
But, Senator Warnock, implied that they were different.
And, maybe, they are. But, how?
Here is my take……
Perhaps, being hopeful is looking toward a specific future outcome with the idea that it may or may not happen.
I choose to play the California Lottery each week because it is fun, involves a negligible expense, and, if I win, as I hope I will, there are lots of things I would like to do with the income.
Because of the incredible odds against my winning, however, I am not at all optimistic that my ticket will have all the winning numbers.
So, perhaps the distinction that Senator Warnock was alluding to was that while he was hopeful that he, and others, would be successful in combating the slew of laws restricting voting rights and that this hope would continue to fuel those collective efforts, he was not optimistic that success, at the State level, would be successful (at least in the short run).
“Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.” —Barack Obama.
Hope is a feeling that can be uplifting and motivating.
Hope says that what you hope for is feasible, desirable and worth working (fighting) for.
At some point, as you get closer to that which you desire, you become optimistic that it is, indeed, in reach. And, you double your efforts to obtain it.
To the extent that this is true, you don’t want to give up hope because what you hope for seems to be very much out of reach.
The lack of hope (hopelessness) leads to resignation and, possibly, depression.
This is why you hold on to your hope and work and fight for what you want.
Hopefully (pun intended), your efforts bear fruit and your hope morphs into optimism.
So, you don’t need optimism to maintain hope.
And, hope is often sufficient to motivate action.
The difference between hope and optimism is basically the time frame in which the possibility of something happening becomes a likely probability.
Hope and optimism are emotions that can, and frequently are, strategically deployed as tools to motivate actions taken to produce impactful change.
You just need to know, appreciate and not be confused by the difference between the two.