Every once in a while, I get to points where I re-evaluate my outlook on life. The rules I use to process what gets thrown at me from day to day, so to speak. Not because I feel the need to be dramatic, but because I think it makes sense to double-check that I've been using reasonable underlying premises. I don't know whether everyone else does this (I'm thinking most people do, it seems natural), but that's of course why I write it down here; in the hope that some of it will possibly echo with you, my dear reader 
OK, enough with the formalities...
There's this thing I've been finding increasingly interesting lately. It's called hope. I don't know if other species experience it, and of course in my arrogance I'd like to believe that it's unique to us humans, but either way I find it really fascinating. I think hope drives more than we give it credit for. Personally, I believe that it's one of the core factors that gets us up in the morning; that it motivates us to keep on doing, to keep on trying to do if we're not doing yet, to keep on finding ways to try if we haven't yet, and to figure out what to try if we don't know yet. It's a universal human feeling (or an emotion, I'm not sure), and thinking about it makes me proud to be a human being. It's a beautiful thing.
As beautiful as it seems though, thinking about it rationally I can't help but consider how silly it really is, especially in light of our understanding of probability. Hope is, quite simply put, the belief that probability will rule in our favour more often than not. Scientifically speaking, this is of course very foolish. It's like building a bridge with bricks that have not been tested (and which we have no way of testing), but with the assumption that most of these bricks will hold up just fine when they're needed to. Hope is a delusion, in other words.
And so here's the problem: Without hope, we are doomed to an existence based largely on probability, with our actions having effect, but limited within the parameters of probability, devoid of meaningful purpose. With hope, we free our perception of life from the constraints of probability, but we're ultimately setting ourselves up for huge disappointment - because probability just simply cannot always rule in our favour. Are you seeing the problem here?
It's a case of (as Bart Simpson said) "you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't".
Except I refuse to be damned.
You see, even though I believe that reason is the only absolute we should ever apply, I have this little voice inside me that says "screw probability". This little voice giggles a little bit every time I see a child learning to walk for the first time, when I see two elderly ladies laughing at a joke, when I feel the slightness of a raindrop on my forehead. It makes me smile when I see a piece of art that exists only to evoke emotion, when I wrap my hands around my bike's handlebars and take that first pedal stroke, when I feel the grass under my feet on a warm summer's day. It sends a tingle through my skin when I see someone closing their eyes after putting a block of chocolate into their mouth, when I see the thrill a street vendor gains from his first sale. It stops me from blinking when I feel the warmth of a hug, when I notice the precision in a piece of engineering, when I feel the light touch between two fingertips. Most importantly, this voice chuckles when on rare occasions I encounter individuals who display an inspiring disregard for probability, when I see how at ease they are with their surroundings, how comfortable they are with not caring about what doesn't concern them. It sends a shiver down my spine when I think about how effortlessly these people evoke smiles around them, when I see the little snippets of expectation they find so natural, when I hear them talk about the future with careless uncertainty. It's this embracement of uncertainty which makes me realise that the real foolishness is in losing hope.
And so, after re-evaluation, I refuse to change my outlook. Hope is real.