To hope is frightening.
To hope is to put faith in the force of the universe. Nothing is certain in this universe; most times things are all doom and gloom.
But there’s still that tiny chance things will turn out fine.
And that’s what keeps the desperate people going: that tiny chance.
A brutal experiment conducted in the
1950’s by Curt Richter placed 2 rats in tall jars half filled with
water. He wanted to test how long the rats can last treading to keep themselves
alive.
The first rat lasted about 15
minutes before giving up and succumbing to the depths of the water.
But before the second rat sank
completely, he pulled the drowning rodent out, dried it off, gave it some time
to rest before putting it right back into the water.
Guess how long that rat managed
to swim this time.
60 hours.
But rats only have the capacity
to swim for 15 minutes! How is that possible?
What Richter did was merely
giving the second rat hope, letting it think that all that struggle is worth
betting its life for.
Just like what happened the first time when the rat thought that giving up was the only option left, turned out it wasn’t.
That rat lived its life clinging on to that one hope, and looked how
it defied nature.
There’s another side to the
meaning of hope that you can take away from this experiment.
Hope comes from gestures that resembles warmth, rest and relief.
Sometimes, you might find yourself at the verge of despair. You might want a short escape, to rest for a moment.
These
times are not unproductive, they are simply necessary for you to become
stronger, to take on a harder, longer challenge down the road.
All you have to do is give yourself that hope. Trust in yourself to hope for the tiny chance that it will get better soon.
Because it always will.