Everyday Canvas

Following Your Bliss versus Hoping for It

Prompt: "Know your own happiness. Wait for nothing but patience-or give it a more fascinating name. Call it hope." Sense and Sensibility Do you agree?

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Although this quote is by the romance genre’s empress and supreme ruler, I have to step back and examine her words the way I understand them.

I like knowing my own happiness, yes, but waiting for it and hoping for it is not my modus operandi; however, working toward it is.

Hope is for the likes of Pandora as the last resort, and as the last resort, it has a dubiousness factor in it that is closer to deficiency and failure. It is something like thinking: I am waiting for this fantastic thing, which may or may not happen at all.

If “know your own happiness” means ‘follow your bliss’, I am all for it, as I am all for working toward my bliss, but just hoping is something else. I can’t deal with the side of hope that hints at some possible negativity. Hoping alone is probably the last resort before failing.

If I am waiting for something to happen, I must also be working toward it, and I must be sure it will happen or else. Even while waiting in line at the supermarket, I know my turn will come. I don’t hope for it. If the line is too long, I search for another line, or else, eventually, I may even search for another supermarket which opens several more cash registers. I don’t have the kind of patience that leaves my happiness just to that iffy hope.