Hope's Own Wreck

To hope, till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates....

I have always loved this line from the closing stanza of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, but when I shared it with my younger son he took quite a different view of it:

"Well yeah, in a way hope is really great. But in another way, hope is nothing! If I hope that I become a rock star, it won't ever happen. But if I expect the life of a rock star to come to me - then it will."

Prometheus Unbound concerns itself with overcoming disaster, and hope is a useful tool for overcoming disaster - but expectation is a means of averting it altogether.