I’m sorry that your experiencing depression and feeling that you want to die and for it all to end.

Often below thoughts of wanting to die is a hope for change.  Which I know seems like a contradiction but isn’t. Life is a process of change a cycle of  birth/death – Birth and death not two sides of a coin but existing within each other.  We cannot change without also letting something go. Every act of creation is also a act of destruction, every act of destruction is a act of creation. Every choice we make also represents the choices we did not make and some times we get stuck mourning the choices not made and so lose sight of where we are.  Often a wish to die is a resistance to birth-death cycle. Wanting things to change while everything we actually do keeps things the same.

Anyway, I found your topic title ‘I want to lose hope’ interesting. It made me smile because of the contradictions such a statement contains. Contradictions that may be influencing the disappointments you have experienced and why you might not be able to let them go and move beyond them. It seems to me that your real hope is to see what might lie beyond your past experiences and where you might go next.

Your saying that your hope is to lose hope – you hope is to die (change) but before you can“die”, you need to lose hope???

It is my opinion that hope is a skill most people suck at. Unskillful hope is hoping for things that aren’t possible like going back in time to do something differently, or hope for things we have no intention to work towards, hope that change might magically just happen – without having to “die” or let go. (The First Nobel Truth is that all life is suffering, pain, and misery. The Second Truth is that this suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire – in my view resisting birth-death cycle that is Life and hoping that that reality wasn’t so)

When hope is unskillful a hope to lose hope just may be the correct path out. Unskillful hope can only lead to depression and becoming stuck.

It seems to me that there is a part of you, an inner wisdom, that Knows you, and knowing you, pushing you to let go of the past and seek out what is beyond the next curve in the road or top of some hill.  (Maybe this will to see what lies beyond the bend, what you can’t yet see or know with certainty, isn’t hope but faith in the birth/death cycle). Your authentic self needing you to have faith in the birth/death cycle, faith in your story and that yes, though you will experience disappointment their will also be experiences of joy… Regardless your story will be an interesting one. So maybe let go of this hope to lose hope and instead let your self hope for what you really seek. Trust this inner wisdom that wants to you to experience what happens next. I have no doubt that you are going to have a story worth telling. (Your story is already worth telling)

Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come. Neither tired reformism nor pseudo-radical adventurism is an expression of hope. To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime. There is no sense in hoping for that which already exists or for that which cannot be. Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort or for violence; those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born. ― Eric Fromm –  The Revolution of Hope

 

“We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested. The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid. And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.” ― Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring