Life, in any of its forms, never stays still — that is the one constant feature of it. When everything changes, the change is the only permanent thing. Everywhere we turn, we run into opposites, into pairs pulling against each other, and there is no getting away from them. What most of us are really after is some kind of balance, a way to keep moving forward without being thrown off course by things we can’t control and here the true challenge begins for all of us.
A few people stumble onto that balance and stop letting the uncontrollable things eat at them, disturb them and make their life hard to live. For the rest, life stays heavy — an unwanted weight they keep dragging around, something closer to a burden than a gift filling their life with anxiety that they wear everyday. But once someone does find that balance, everything shifts. Life stops feeling like dead weight and starts feeling like something worth living.
This summer during vacation, reading through Nahjul Balagha — the collected sermons, letters, and sayings of Hazrat Ali — I came across an idea that was a new discovery and struck me as exactly this kind of balancing mechanism: hope and fear. Together, they are what keep life pointed toward something good. They don’t erase pain, but they change our relationship to it — the small hurts stop mattering so much, and even the deep, lasting ones become something we can carry. Wisdom, in this view, isn’t about avoiding sorrow. It’s about learning to hold joy and sorrow at the same time without being overwhelmed by one. The balance is the true trick of life to make it worth bearing.
Hope is what keeps despair at bay. As long as we can picture things improving, we don’t fold. We don’t get stuck replaying the past, and we don’t hand ourselves over to circumstance. Just imagining that something good might still be coming is enough to keep us moving. It is a light in the lowest realms of darkness. Fear does something different but equally necessary — it keeps us from getting intoxicated on our own good fortune. Health, money, comfort — none of it is permanent, and fear reminds us of that. It makes us picture life without those things, and that mental picture keeps us grounded. It is what keeps a person humble instead of self-satisfied, generous instead of grasping. Hazrat Ali says that don’t be arrogant in good fortune because you don’t know when it will turn into bad fortune and don’t be disappointed in bad fortune because you don’t know when it will change into good fortune. Hope of good things in bad situations and the fear of bad things in good situations is what makes us humble, generous and ordinary like everybody else. Struggle tests our patience; comfort tests our character. Held together, hope and fear stop us from either underrating ourselves or getting too full of ourselves. They pull us toward the middle path — away from excess in either direction.
Both fear and hope function almost like medicine, treating the sickness of the body and the sickness of the spirit alike. The sick person even in despair hopes to be well; the well person even in high spirits fears getting sick. The poor hope for wealth; the wealthy fear losing it. The grieving hope for happiness; the happy fear that the grief will return. It constantly goes on like this way— and it is this very back-and-forth that keeps a person steady rather than shattered. The beauty of life comes from this tussle of fear and hope and it makes it meaningful and exciting.
We are human, which means we fail. We give in to what we shouldn’t, the hardships of life, and afterward the guilt sits on us — guilt toward ourselves that we could not traverse the vicious circle of poverty and guilt toward God that he did not help us instantly. That is the fear part, and it is real. But hope doesn’t let it become the whole story. It reminds us that mercy is still available, that forgiveness is possible — as long as the regret is genuine and we don’t just go back to the same mistake. As Imam Ali put it: fear nothing but your own wrongdoing, and place your hope in nothing but your Lord. In the moments when we are ready to just give up, hope is what makes us try one more time, trusting that relief will come. But hope by itself isn’t enough — it has to be paired with action, or it turns into an excuse for doing nothing. Neither hope should make us procrastinate nor fear should make us haste in our life. Both are detrimental for us and don’t yield the expected results. fear without hope curdles into despair. The two need each other. Fear only becomes bearable when hope is standing next to it — and that combination, more than anything else, is what holds a person together when nothing else will.
The writer can be reached at azaadbhat28@gmail.com