What is Worse?
What is worse The hope that things will change Or The certainty Born of experience That they never will
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What is worse The hope that things will change Or The certainty Born of experience That they never will
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This very valid question pesters and pesters logically. The only place to go is optimism. It doesn't matter if you're right about being optimistic. What matters is how your life feels at this moment. Right now, today is all the certainty you have. Right now, today, is where you create most of your own reality. No matter what you are told about rockets, bombs, pistol shots, tsunamis, they are all maybes. Be optimistic you won't be harmed today. You're gonna be right and safe. Believe it
This poem feels like someone quietly admitting a truth most of us carry at some point that tension between wanting to believe things can get better and feeling worn down by everything that suggests they won’t. The question is simple, but it lands with real weight because it comes from lived experience, not abstraction. You can almost hear the speaker thinking it to themselves, not performing it. There’s a kind of tired honesty in the way “hope” and “certainty” are placed side by side, as if both have disappointed them in different ways. The poem leaves you standing in that grey space where change feels distant, yet the act of asking the question still hints at a small, stubborn spark. It’s brief, but it lingers like a thought you’ve had before and didn’t quite know how to say.