Hope Dies Last

Why our desire for an outcome can blind us to reality

Back in the days when I was spending time in Russia and Ukraine (more than 20 years ago), when a majority of Ukrainians spoke Russian as the default and so I could talk to more or less anyone with ease, I heard one stock phrase in particular over and over again: Надежда умирает последней. It means, “hope dies last” and is most often used somewhat ironically to signal that an effort or other activity is futile and this is obvious to everyone except whoever’s performing the action.

It’s a condition we’re all prey to, and it’s a mental quirk evolution has bequeathed to us. If we imagine our distant ancestors and the conditions in which they lived, it’s easy to see how persistence in the face of setbacks could often make the difference between life and death. The survivors — those whose hope kept them going when everything seemed bleak — were the ones whose genes we’ve inherited.

Unfortunately, in a world infinitely more complex than that inhabited by those distant ancestors, many of our hardwired cognitive traits are now maladaptive. The obesity epidemic is merely the most visible evidence of this unfortunate fact. For our ancestors, calories were scarce and uncertain so any calorie was a good calorie and should be consumed immediately. Obesity is the result of a formerly adaptive…