What is hope, anyway? For some of us, it’s a fire inside that burns for fame and fortune, a cure for a disease, a dream home, or a lover. For others, it’s a tiny hope that your life will get even a little bit better. When depression and life circumstances take hold, that little hope can barely be an ember among the coals, lost in a dark cave.
“Everything happens for a reason” is something we tell people who’ve gone through something traumatic in the hopes they find a silver lining in their cloud. To suggest to a parent who has lost a child there is a good reason behind this loss is sometimes more hurtful than simply saying, “I’m so sorry this happened.” Yes, we want reasons for our suffering. Why would a good person get punished? It’s a question older than the story of Job. We hope there is a good reason for our suffering, some kind of light in our darkness. Some have lost hope altogether.
Karyn Hall, Ph.D., writes in a Psychology Today article titled Finding Hope: “When you don’t have hope, you have no energy or motivation for therapy or for any effort to change your situation. What’s the use in reaching out to meet people? You are sure you will be rejected. Why bother exercising or cleaning your home or volunteering—it won’t really make a difference. You know you will always be lonely, depressed, anxious, unemployed, or stuck in the same situation that is making you miserable. You don’t want to risk the pain of further disappointment by even trying.”
Hall continues, “Unfortunately, this painful despair and resignation set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have no hope, no belief in therapy or that any action you take will make any difference, then that may well be the outcome. Change is very difficult, has multiple ups and downs, and requires motivation and commitment.”
She lists ways to regain hope, all practical advice that includes practicing mindfulness, turning to faith, and performing acts of kindness. All helpful to some, but to many who suffer depression, it feels like nothing will ever get better, no matter how hard they try.
The darker side of hopelessness results in suicide. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. In 2017, 47,173 people died by suicide, and 1,400,000 people attempted it. While not all of these attempts were from depressed people, a multitude were.
Turning to philosophy, Plato’s famous “Allegory of the Cave” depicts prisoners who are chained to the walls of a cave. They see shadows cast by the light of a fire, and they come to believe the shadows are real, rather than the people who cast them. While the allegory is largely considered to be about ignorance and society, you can apply it to the psychology of depression. When depression takes hold, your mind puts on a show of shadows; it alters your perception of the world around you; it lies to you, telling you you’re not good enough, no one will ever want you, you’ll never amount to anything, etc. As Stephen King once said, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
When feeling hopeless, sometimes hearing others’ stories can even help. Projecthopeexchange.com is a place to hear short, encouraging messages from people all over the world. One of the best things you can do is surround yourself with people who care for you, who want what’s best for you. If you are having suicidal thoughts, please don’t let your mind trick you into believing the shadows are real. Call 1-800-237-8255. Or call your best friend or another loved one or someone in your church or visit Project Hope Exchange.
I’ll leave you with the wise words of a hobbit, Samwise Gamgee, who, in “Lord of the Rings,” encourages his friend, Frodo, when all hope seems lost: “It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. That there’s something good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
June 18, 2026
