Society tells us through religion and self-help culture that hope is a good thing. Some people even name their daughters Hope. We tell ourselves that one day things will change and get better, and so we wait, and wait ... but what if hope is a lie? What if it actually increases our suffering?
When I was a Christian I would have hope that god would answer my prayers or help to solve my problems, because that's what the Bible says. Now I pretty much think the opposite. Hope is toxic and even dangerous. In Greek mythology, when Pandora's box was opened, many curses were unleashed on mankind, but the worst curse of all, hope, was left inside the box.
Hope is usually seen as a virtue by society. But when you hope for something, you yearn for that thing to happen. This means you are more mentally and emotionally invested in the outcome due to hope. If you fail to achieve a goal or something you're hoping for doesn't happen, then you will have a much stronger emotional reaction to this negative outcome. You may feel disappointed, sad or even be in outright despair. These feelings can ruin your day, or lead you to make some bad choices that have long-term consequences.
At one point I had been living largely hope free for almost a year. Basically I had accepted my less than ideal situation in life and didn't expect much from the future. Anything good that happened was just a bonus. I still had goals that I pursued, but I wasn't really emotionally invested in the outcome. I can't say I was happy, but I wasn't depressed either, which had been my previous situation. This hope free mindset allowed me to cope with life, which is the best I could reasonably expect.
Then something happened that caused me to seriously believe my life could change for the better in a significant way. I started hoping again. But of course it failed and things fell apart. I felt emotionally crushed and disappointed. Basically nothing good came from having hope. However it was hard to resist feeling hopefully, it seemed like the stars were aligning and there was a decent chance of a good outcome.
What can make hope even more dangerous is hoping for unrealistic and even delusional things to come true. When I was a Christian, I took the Bible quite literally and hoped for god to solve my problems through his providence, or even miracles. Because the Bible says if we believe our prayers will come true, then they will happen. But this is of course not true. That said I wasn't asking for material wealth or fame in these prayers, I asked for things like peace, joy and wisdom, some of which are promised to believers in the Bible.
When the prayers failed to materialize and my hopes were crushed, I would blame myself for not being a good enough Christian and thought god didn't love me like all the other Christians who were seemingly blessed by comparison. This increased my mental suffering and it did eventually lead me to question my faith and leave the religion.
You can have goals in life and work toward them without being too attached to the outcome. If you succeed, that's great. If not, that's OK too. You can learn from your failures and it's not the end of the world.
But with hope the significance of a failure is magnified, and it can lead to a serious mental reaction where you can even become a complete emotional wreck, depending on how high your hopes were. Without hope you will be more calm and rational, which will allow you to evaluate the problem and look for ways to fix it and try again. But you may also want to consider letting go of some goals that aren't feasible. However hope may prevent you from doing this and trap you into pursuing unrealistic or undesirable goals.
While I don't believe we have free will and sometimes we will find ourselves hoping for things, we can still try to mentally remind ourselves that hope is a toxic mental trap and try to reduce the amount of things we hope for with this realization. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said that hope prolongs human suffering rather than alleviating it. By hoping less, we can reduce our mental and emotional suffering.