Hope Is for Suckers

Most of us, at some point, have clung to the phrase “Expect disappointment and you won’t be disappointed” like it’s a life raft in a sea of letdowns. But is it truly comforting, even remotely? To me, it reads more like emotional self-defence—an attempt to cushion the fall before the impact. If I expect the worst, maybe it won’t hurt as much when it comes. It’s cynicism parading as wisdom. But if you subscribe to the law of attraction—the idea that thoughts shape reality—then expecting disappointment might just be another way of summoning it.

In fact, this essay could just as well be titled A Cynic’s Guide to Disappointment—or, perhaps, an accidental introduction to the law of attraction, because it begs the question: is there, after all, a way for us—flawed, folly-ridden creatures that we are—to manifest misery by sheer force of expectation?

In trying to wrangle this question in my mind, one thought spiralled into another, and before I knew it, I was revisiting the words of my favourite character—Maya Hart—from the Disney sitcom Girl Meets World. Maya, ever the cynic, lives by her mother’s motto: “Hope is for suckers.” Her worldview and decision-making orbit this single belief—that getting your hopes up only sets you up for failure. Or, more modernly (and infamously) put: expect disappointment, and you won’t be disappointed.

As a kid, I wanted to be Maya—and to some extent, I was. I still am. I hated hope then; I hate hope now. But studying literature and philosophy has given that hatred a kind of depth, a layered meaning. Why do I despise hope? Is it because I’ve grown used to being rendered hopeless, even while hope quietly pulsed in my chest? Perhaps. But it’s also because this whole “expect disappointment and you won’t be disappointed” mantra sits oddly beside what I once learned about the law of attraction—something I first encountered when my father gifted me The Secret by Rhonda Byrne for my fourteenth birthday. That was the year I learned that thoughts, supposedly, become things.

Through her book, Byrne essentially repackaged and popularised the law of attraction: the idea that thoughts shape reality. Focus on the good, and the good will find you. Dwell on the bad, and you invite it in. Your thoughts, apparently, emit energy, and that energy manifests your experiences. Like attracts like. Think sunshine, get sunshine. Think doom, well... doom it is. Which, needless to say, clashed violently with my long-held doctrines of “hope is for suckers” and “expect disappointment so you don’t end up disappointed.” I was fourteen and already at a philosophical crossroads.

This spiral of thought—about the law of attraction and the minute art of dodging disappointment—followed its own little timeline. By fifteen, I’d picked up The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wasn’t a fan (I read it begrudgingly for the book club I was in), but I did notice something that lingered: the novel’s hidden obsession with hope. Gatsby’s dream of Daisy, his constant reaching for that unreachable green light across the bay—it wasn’t just romantic, it was delusional. Or maybe it was both. It made me wonder: how much hope can a person carry before it becomes too much? Before it turns from something luminous into something ruinous?

I’d journaled about it, of course. Convinced myself that nothing, really, is ever our whole life. That youth is just a concept—an illusion sustained by the persistent ticking of a clock somewhere deep in the mind. One moment it’s there, the next it slips, like sand through an hourglass. When we’re caught in the throes of it, everything feels earth-shattering, like it matters beyond measure—but it doesn’t. Our choices leave their marks, yes, but they aren’t what define us. I had made peace with that truth, whether it was born of hope or rather the absence of it.

But peace is a strange thing—it settles, sure, but it also simmers. You don’t always notice when a belief stops being a maxim and starts becoming muscle memory. Which is why, years later, I found myself circling back to a line I read at sixteen, that hit like gospel: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung, in all his maddening clarity, had named what I’d long suspected but never articulated.

What if expecting disappointment isn’t just a mindset—it’s a script? One so deeply rehearsed in the undercurrent of our minds that it starts to shape the stage, the lighting, the lines we speak without knowing. We think we’re predicting outcomes, being wise, being safe. But really, we’re fulfilling prophecies we didn’t even know we’d written. We live our lives bracing for a fall, never realising we’ve been stepping off ledges we built ourselves.

Jung’s words managed to rewire my brain, questioning everything I thought I had already figured out. The unconscious is not some dormant wasteland—it’s a puppeteer, subtle and shrouded, and it tugs at the strings of our choices while we sit convinced we’re dancing freely. If we expect disappointment—not just as a joke, not just as a defence mechanism, but truly believe it—then it seeps quietly into every decision. We love less deeply, try less bravely, and hope more cautiously. All in the name of survival, never realising we’ve confused caution for control.

And here lies the tragedy: we call it fate. We say “it wasn’t meant to be” or “I knew it would fall apart,” not realising it was never fate—it was just fear wearing the costume of prophecy. The universe doesn’t conspire against us nearly as often as our own minds do.

So maybe that green light wasn’t a symbol of unreachable dreams at all—maybe it was the perfect metaphor for unconscious yearning. The problem was never the distance, but the inability to recognise that it only glowed because we kept it out of reach.

It hit me then—the connection I’d been circling around all along was real. If I expect disappointment just to avoid being disappointed, but also believe that thoughts become things… then am I not, in some way, manifesting the very disappointment I’m trying to dodge? That, I realised, was the question at the centre of it all.

It makes you wonder—does manifestation stem from a need to believe we have control, while expecting disappointment is just surrender dressed as wisdom? Manifestation says, “I shape my reality,” a muted rebellion against havoc, a belief that desire holds meaning in the universe. But expecting disappointment? That’s the acceptance of inevitable failure before it even knocks. It’s the assumption that things will go wrong, so why not get ahead of the pain? One clings to control; the other relinquishes it entirely. And somewhere in the middle—caught between delusion and despair—is the question: which belief is more honest? Or better yet, which one keeps us alive?

The emotional logic in play goes: expecting disappointment is a form of self-protection. You’re shielding yourself from hope—because when hope shatters, it cuts deeper. The manifestation logic, however, argues the opposite: expecting disappointment is the very act of summoning it. By focusing on what you don’t want, you align yourself with it energetically. There’s the existentialist approach too—disappointment is inevitable, so expect it, sure, but don’t let it govern you. And then there’s the manifestor’s way of seeing it: you’re a tuning fork. Dwell on disappointment, and you begin to vibrate at its frequency. So yes, expecting the worst might feel safe—but you could just be co-authoring the downfall. 

Maybe, instead of expecting disappointment or pretending it doesn’t exist, we try something in between: acknowledge its possibility (“This might not go the way I want”) while still leaning cautiously into hope (“And I’ll survive either way”). It isn’t delusional optimism. It’s resilient expectancy—hoping with open hands, not clenched fists. That’s where I landed.

And, now we round up to the beloved present—university life and nineteen-year-old me. These days, I find myself lingering over the words of dear old Seneca, the ever-wise Roman Stoic: “He who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.”

It’s a sentiment that stopped me mid-read, mid-life even. Because isn’t that what I—and maybe you—have been doing all along? Suffering ahead of schedule. Preloading heartbreak. Forecasting failure like it’s a weather report we think we can brace for. As if disappointment hurts less when anticipated. As if naming the fall softens the landing altogether.

But here’s the problem: in anticipating every storm, we forget to stand in the sun. We flinch at joy, waiting for the other shoe—or the entire closet—to drop. And in doing so, we rob the present of its presence.

Seneca, in his brutally elegant way, reminded me that pain is a thief when you invite it in before its time. Maybe there’s wisdom in not rehearsing the worst-case scenario on loop. Maybe bracing is just another form of self-sabotage. Maybe “hope is for suckers” was never defiance—it was fear dressed up as foresight.

And now, I’m left thinking: what if the real act of courage isn’t protecting yourself from disappointment—but learning how to sit with it when it comes, without having wasted all that time grieving a future that hadn’t even happened yet?

Maybe hope isn’t naïve. Maybe it’s necessary.

Still, I won’t pretend I’ve banished cynicism from my bloodstream. No, it runs deep—like ink in water, staining even the clearest thoughts. I don’t trust hope easily. It has, more often than not, betrayed me. I've had my fair share of raising my expectations just high enough to watch them crack on impact. And so yes, I still flinch when things go too well. I still wait for the silence after laughter, the immediate drop after the climb.

But lately, I’ve been trying something else. Not optimism—let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Just… presence. A gentle kind of noticing. Because when I’m here—truly here—there’s nothing to regret and even less to fear. Yesterday already took what it needed. Tomorrow hasn’t earned my anxiety yet. And right now, this exact moment, is all that’s asking for my attention.

And so I sit with it.

The bitter. The beautiful. The in-between.

Maybe that’s not hope. Maybe it’s something quieter, something almost trust-worthy.

Maybe it’s enough.

And perhaps, “hope is for suckers,” but expecting disappointment isn’t much better—it’s just heartbreak pre-ordered. And if thoughts really do become things, then what a waste to spend them all imagining the worst. Maybe the trick isn’t to hope blindly or brace constantly, but to think carefully. To think kindly. Because if the mind really is that powerful, then perhaps the most radical thing we can do… is to believe it won’t all fall apart. Not yet.

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Glossary:

Cynic - a person who believes that people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honourable or unselfish reasons.

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