Tao Te Ching 13 (Teaching 2)

Hope is as hollow as fear.
Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self.

Have faith in the way things are.
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If we boil all our emotions down, we’re left with a residue in the shape of a coin. On one side is love and on the other side is fear – once again, we find opposites sides of the same coin – where there is one, there is the other.

All other emotions, including hope, arise from either love or fear. Of these two, only love is real because love is experienced and expressed in the present moment. Fear is never in the present – fear resides only in the past or the future, neither of which are truly real here and now.

Hope is fear looking forward rather than back over the shoulder. Hope is fear wearing a faint smile rather than a worried grimace. Hope is something grasped by people who fear that what they hope for will not happen.

The only way to be hopeless is to be fearless. The only way to be fearless is to move beyond the need for hope. The fearless have no need for hope.