Hopeful but Not Optimistic
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
(Psalm 42:5)
Psalm 42 is a psalm of hope in the face of despair, but there isn’t a hint of optimism in it. The literary critic Terry Eagleton once said that the optimist is just as bereft of hope as the nihilist—neither has any need of it.
In common usage, though, the language of “hope” is on a continuum with optimism, only weaker. Imagine you have plans for a picnic with friends this weekend, but the forecast is predicting a strong chance of rain. You text one of…
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