For an optimist, it makes no sense to loose hope. We can always do better( Instead by being devastated resigned or disgusted), limit the damage ( instead of letting all to go to pot), find an alternative solution ( instead of wallowing pitifully in failure), rebuild what has been destroyed ( instead of saying it is all over!), take the current situation as a starting point ( instead of wasting our time crying over the past and lamenting the present), start from scratch ( instead of ending there) understand that sustain effort will have to be made in the best apparent direction (instead of being paralysed by indecision and fatalism), and use every present moment to advance, appreciate, act and enjoy inner well being (instead of wasting of our time brooding over the past and fearing the future).
There are those who say like the Australian farmer interviewed on the radio during the forest fires of 2001: I have lost everything, " I will never be able to rebuild my life." and there are people like the navigator Jacques Yves Le Toumelin, who, as he watched his first ship being torched by the Germans in 1944, Paraphrased Rudiyard Kipling: "If you can see your life's work destroyed and get straight back to the grindstone, then you will be a man my son." he immediately build a new boat and circumnavigated the world solo, under sail.
Hope is defined by pschychologist as the conviction as one can find the means to attain one's goal and develop the motivation necessary to do so. It is known that Hope improves students test results and athlete's performance, makes illness and agonising debility more bearable, and makes pain itself ( from burns, arthritis, spinal injuries or blindness for example) easier to tolerate. It has been demonstrated for instance using a method to measure resistance to pain, that people who show mark tendency to be hopeful are able to tolerate contact with a very cold surface twice as long as those who do not.
