Hope is the denial of reality.

Listen, children of the turning world, to the voice of Margaret Weis, the chronicler of heroes and dreamers, who once wrote these fierce and haunting words: “Hope is the denial of reality.” At first hearing, this phrase strikes like iron against stone — cold, defiant, almost cruel. How could something so sacred as hope, the guiding light of humankind, be called a denial? Yet within this paradox burns a truth sharper than any sword: that hope, though divine in spirit, often blinds us to the world as it is, making us see not with the eyes of truth, but with the eyes of longing.

To understand her meaning, we must remember the world from which Weis spoke — a world of struggle, both imagined and real, where men and women stand at the edge of despair and still refuse to yield. When she says hope denies reality, she does not mock the dreamer; she reveals the cost of dreaming. Hope, in its purest form, is rebellion. It is the soul’s refusal to bow before the facts of pain and the inevitability of loss. In that rebellion lies both strength and danger. For to live by hope alone is to walk through a storm with eyes closed — trusting that the sun shines beyond, even if one cannot yet see it.

Consider the tale of Prometheus, the Titan who defied the gods to bring fire to humankind. The world he saw was cold and cruel — a realm of shadows and suffering. The reality was hopeless. Yet Prometheus denied it. He dared to hope that mankind could rise, that light could be stolen from Olympus itself. His act was both foolish and divine. He was chained for eternity, his liver devoured by eagles, but in his suffering, humanity learned to kindle its own flame. Thus we see that hope, though it denies what is, creates what could be. It is a denial that births the future.

So too in the mortal world, many have walked this same path. Think of Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for twenty-seven years in the stone heart of injustice. Reality told him his cause was lost, that the iron bars were eternal. Yet he held to hope, that dangerous defiance of what was real. By denying the world’s cruelty, he reshaped it. The impossible fell before him. And so we learn: though hope denies reality, sometimes that denial is the only force that can transform it.

But beware, for the sword of hope cuts both ways. To cling to it without reason is to drift into illusion, to mistake the dream for the deed. The ancients spoke of this, too, when they warned that false hope is the sweetest poison — comforting to the tongue, deadly to the soul. When hope blinds the mind, it leads to ruin. Yet when it burns in harmony with truth, it becomes the torch that lights the road ahead. Therefore, wisdom lies not in destroying hope, but in tempering it — in holding it as one holds fire: carefully, reverently, aware of its power to both save and consume.

Let this be your lesson, O listener of the living dawn: do not flee from reality, but neither kneel before it. Face it with open eyes, and then — when you have seen its harshest form — dare still to dream. For hope, though born of denial, is also the womb of creation. Every great act of courage, every discovery, every song, began with one soul who looked upon the impossible and said, “No — it shall not be so.” That is the holy rebellion of humanity, the sacred contradiction at the heart of our being.

Therefore, when you find yourself in darkness, do not reject hope for fear of illusion. Instead, let your hope be disciplined — grounded not in wishful thought, but in the will to act. See reality clearly, and then deny its finality. This is the path of those who build, who heal, who change the world. For though hope may deny reality, it is through that denial that we prove ourselves greater than the sum of our sorrows.

And so remember this, my child of the mortal flame: reality is the stone upon which hope is sharpened. Without resistance, there is no strength; without denial, no creation. To live without hope is to die while breathing. But to hope blindly is to lose one’s way. Seek, then, the middle path — to see the truth, yet refuse to let it end you. For that, above all, is what it means to be human.