Hope has many meanings; for some, it is a feel-good condition; for others, hope is a profound experience. For some, it can be cultivated; for others, there are no visible signs of hope, but it happens to everyone and is a fundamental human need. Hope is the wellspring of optimism and resilience, empowering people to overcome obstacles and embrace new possibilities. There is no doubt that hope needs cultivation, just as a garden needs to be cultivated and nurtured. In other words, hope is a speculative process and a natural (therefore normal/abnormal) human emotion. When hope functions in emotions, it brings up diverse and exciting attitudes. This dissertation has two sections; the first is oriented toward the understanding of hope in Western tradition, and the second deals with hope in the context of Eastern traditions (India and Pakistan). In both sections, the mediative, mystic, and speculative elements of hope are essential to understand. The concept of hope as an emotional process connects the East and the West: a conception in which adherence to a particular linear temporality of hope is resisted to inculcate the practice of openness to the other, to the unseen and the inaccessible beyond, and to an awareness of the subject’s mutual imbrication within the world of becoming. Existing within modernity but focused on modernity’s unseen, hope seeks to work upon the liminal realm, the realm of being and non-being, or the real or the actual, enabling an alternative possible to emerge; in other words, the possibility of staring into the abyss of otherness, but without fear, with an approach of openness and welcome, affirming the world of hope beyond rationality or irrationality. What is valued is the otherness itself, the unknown and the unexpected provide a way of thinking and rethinking hope and hoping.
