forever young.

“Hoping for the best but expecting the worst.” –youth group in the song forever young.

The line that appealed most to me was, “hoping for the best but expecting the worst.” It has been like my motto ever since I first heard this song. Whenever in anticipation of something to come, I always keep this in mind. It is like a consolation and warning to prevent the flow of too much emotion. It is a logical way of maintaining a mind set that will prepare a person to face the bad times, without making them too much of pessimists. Believing in what this line is trying to teach us makes us realists. There is a need for reason to keep a check on emotion and by ‘hoping for the best but expecting the worst, we make ourselves do just that.
I perceive life to be a mixture of good and bad things. I believe that every event has at least two possible outcomes, one good and one bad. A person must always live hoping and keeping faith that the best outcome will prevail. Yet the person must not sit back waiting for good things to come to them. They must prepare for the worst, make an effort to get the best and only then it will come to them. Though I am a firm believer that one must strive to get what one wants, there are things out of our control and in those cases this line should be one’s only rule.
26/11 is considered to be one of the most tragic events of contemporary Indian history. Information of unlicensed boats docking at Cuffe parade was given to the police. Threats had been made in past as well. The police should have heightened security and stayed prepared hoping that guns wouldn’t need to be fired. Instead, sitting back expecting the best, few terrorists were able to take hotels, a building and a hospital hostage for 3 days. If man prepared for the worst then history would be written differently. Scientifically, weather can be foretold tornadoes and storms can not be prevented, but instead of just giving warnings, preparations must be made to prevent extensive damage. This way the casualties and the destruction could be kept to a minimum.
Expecting the worst isn’t being negative but being realistic. One might argue that it pulls the emotions down, but taking the few cases when the preparations came to no use and the best outcome prevailed would be confirmation bias. Its always better to be safe than sorry as people say.