Let us stop lamenting what didn’t happen or what we only wished for. Let us honor those wishes by planting them into the soil of hope and nurturing them with action.
By Abdullah Usman Morai
Some words don’t merely belong to a language; they belong to the soul. Wish and hope are two such words. They do not enter our lives with fanfare, yet they live inside every whispered prayer, every silent sigh, every glance toward the sky. They belong to the child in the village of Thar gazing at a monsoon sky, to the mother in Lyari clutching a photograph of her son, to the student in Sukkur dreaming of a scholarship abroad, and to the protester in Islamabad standing for a better tomorrow. These words are not just expressions; they are lifelines—twin flames of human yearning.
In the land of Sindh, where Sufi saints once wandered barefoot across salt deserts and spiritual seekers paused under neem trees to listen to poetry echoing from shrines, wishes and hopes are stitched into the cultural soul. They rise like the fragrance of ratti blossoms after rain, and they float across time like the Sindhu River—sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent, always flowing.
To explore wish and hope is to walk through the tender terrain of human longing. It is to see not only what people lack, but what they believe in despite the lack. And perhaps, most beautifully, it is to understand that to hope is not only to want, but to refuse to give up wanting.
What is the Difference Between a Wish and a Hope?
A wish is a flutter in the heart, often intangible, spontaneous, born of desire. It says, “If only…”. It is personal, emotional, soft, and at times passive. A hope, however, leans forward—it says, “Maybe, still…” It carries an energy of anticipation, sometimes even defiance.
Wishing can be dreamy. Hope can be daring.
To wish is to light a candle and place it on water. To hope is to build a lighthouse, brick by brick, even in the storm.
In our everyday conversations, we often blur the two: “I wish things get better.” “I hope she comes back.” But inside the mind, they carry different weights. A wish may exist without effort. A hope often demands belief and, eventually, movement.
Symbols in Culture and Literature
Across cultures, wishes are tied to rituals—birthday candles, shooting stars, dandelions, and coins tossed into fountains. In many Sindhi villages, tying a ribbon on a shrine’s fence is a wish carried by faith. A child pressing her palms together before Shah Abdul Latif’s shrine may not articulate it, but she is whispering something ancient: let it be.
Hope, meanwhile, is the central theme in poetry, literature, and revolution. Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Faiz Ahmed Faiz once said, “Bol ke lab azaad hain teray”, a line bursting not just with defiance, but with hope in the power of speech.
In Sufi poetry, hope is a longing for union with the Divine. In folk tales, wishes often come wrapped in consequences. But in all cases, they represent the hunger for more than what is.
The Psychological and Emotional Pulse
Hope is a psychological anchor. In trauma and adversity, hope becomes a survival mechanism. It’s not just poetic—it’s biological. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, wrote that the moment a prisoner lost hope, death was not far.
In Pakistan, where people live between inflation and ideology, where corruption and crisis seem cyclical, hope becomes oxygen. It is what keeps farmers sowing seeds after floods, and teachers returning to blackboards in broken classrooms.
Wishing, on the other hand, can sometimes become escapism. It can be a lullaby we sing to ourselves so we don’t feel the rawness of reality. But even escapism has its place—it can preserve us during despair, giving us time to heal.
The real magic happens when a wish matures into hope, and hope evolves into will.
From Wishing to Doing: Goals and Action
There is a chasm between “I wish I had a better life” and “I will build a better life.” The bridge is hope, and the planks are effort.
Wishes are passive until they are translated into vision. Hope is the act of imagining not just what you want, but what could be, and then inching toward it.
In Sindh, thousands of young people dream of leaving their villages for education, not because they hate their roots, but because they hope to bring something back—knowledge, opportunity, dignity. A wish would keep them dreaming. Hope gets them on a bus to Karachi University, even if they can’t afford lunch.
Pakistan is filled with dreamers. What we need now is to build a culture of hope that turns dreams into goals, and goals into systems.
Faith, Philosophy, and the Human Spirit
Religions teach us that wishing is prayer in its most humble form, and hope is the trust in Divine timing. The Quran tells us not to despair of Allah’s mercy. Buddhism teaches us to release desire, yet not to give up compassion. In Hinduism, wishes made at sacred rivers are believed to reach the gods.
Philosophers have argued whether hope is rational or foolish. Nietzsche warned against false hope. Camus embraced hope even in absurdity.
But the human spirit, again and again, has chosen to hope. It is irrational, yes. It is also miraculous.
In Pakistan’s darkest hours—earthquakes, floods, martial laws, censorships—people did not only survive. They hoped. That is not weakness. That is resilience disguised as poetry.
Conclusion
In the end, wish and hope are not just words. They are mirrors of the human condition. They reveal what we yearn for, what we endure, and what we dare to believe. In Sindh’s dusty fields, in the buzzing streets of Lahore, in the uncertain future of Quetta’s youth, wishes and hopes walk side by side.
But there is something more powerful than either word alone: the choice to act upon them. To turn a wish into a seed, and hope into water.
Let us stop lamenting what didn’t happen or what we only wished for. Let us honor those wishes by planting them into the soil of hope and nurturing them with action.
Pakistan’s story—like every human story—is written between the lines of what is and what could be. If we dare, we can turn our whispering wishes into declarations of change, and our quiet hopes into engines of transformation.
Let the world say we are a people of resilience, of longing—but also of becoming.
Read: The Many Worlds We Live In
_______________
Abdullah Soomro, penname Abdullah Usman Morai, hailing from Moro town of Sindh, province of Pakistan, is based in Stockholm Sweden. Currently he is working as Groundwater Engineer in Stockholm Sweden. He did BE (Agriculture) from Sindh Agriculture University Tando Jam and MSc water systems technology from KTH Stockholm Sweden as well as MSc Management from Stockholm University. Beside this he also did masters in journalism and economics from Shah Abdul Latif University Khairpur Mirs, Sindh. He is author of a travelogue book named ‘Musafatoon’. His second book is in process. He writes articles from time to time. A frequent traveler, he also does podcast on YouTube with channel name: VASJE Podcast.
