Denial, Faith, Hope, Belief

Riddle me this. What is the difference?

Okey...so I wuz over at Rhino's joint, makin a comment about a par-tic-u-lar-ly though provokin' piece. (very beeee-careful, this post ain't fer the faint-o-heart, nor those lookin fer internet time-passin - it'll mean something) and I found myself writin' this, and realized I shouldn't take up comment space fer it. In fact, it's been something on my brain for a long while. And It's at least post-size, so here I am. This is the skinny - I was about to write, this:

"People often make a stink about being in "denial". Strangely, I think that's a word misinterpreted, instead of a weakness, it's laden with power. How else you gonna convince yerself you can achive more than you already have?"

Now, I dig this line is probly going to throw you in a different direction than I'm headin', so let's get a few things square before we move on.

Here's the wiki-dictionary's take on denial:
a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

So, here's the same source's take on faith: (author's aside, not as easy to edit down-it's laden with religious meaning)
a belief in the trustworthiness of an idea.

And here's the same source describing hope:
a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope implies a certain amount of despair, wanting, wishing, suffering or perseverance — i.e., believing that a better or positive outcome is possible even when there is some evidence to the contrary

Finally, here's the same source's definition of Belief:
Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.

(One more author's aside right here)
Well now, I'm going to say that these are definitions from wikipedia - which certainly can't be taken as "dictionary" or even "encyclopedia" based "facts," but I'm pretty sure there's been enough people who took exceptions (on many, many different interpretations) to the definition over the course of wikipedia's lifespan, to whittle these down to where they're at, and this is a consensus.
(end aside)

So - this brings me back to where I was at more than a number of years ago when I came up with the idea of the human condition being nothing more than some inherent power within each one of us that hears the alarm clock that knows - "Today will be better than yesterday." Now, I have no proof - or even personal speculation - that a mountain puma or grizzly bear doesn't wake up and think the exact same thing...but I do know how I've delt with a number of bad occurrances on bad days, which is something along the lines of "Forget about it. It will be better tomorrow." (it never works because of long-term memory, which I've talked about (just the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs 2 proove a point) before )

Yeah, so anyhoo - lemmy get back to denial, and give it a Fjord-edit just a bit, to this:
a person is faced with a fact and rejects it, despite evidence.

Oooh -quite negative! Boooo! Rejecting facts is for morons! Up with Faith, Hope and Belief! Down with Denial! Down with you, I say!

Ooop - hang on...

(of course you knew this was coming...it's Fjord after all)

Denial is the only one of these four words that does not have the word "belief" in it's actual definition. Also, the only word to have any negative connotation. Yet, belief is simply - the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true - with or without evidence. If yer still with me, then it's obvious that Hope and Faith hang their hats on the same peg that Denial does.

Will you wake up tomorry and:

A) Deny the evidence to the contrary, and make it a better day?

B) have Faith that tomorrow will become better than yesterday?

C) Hope that you can do better today than yesterday?

D) Believe that whatever's next will be better than what came before?

This last bit could have been written different, sure. Mebby you can do better.

(bring it, I'd love to be challenged on this)

Yet, which answer is the most pro-active in our reality? Seems to me more than a few people who pump up faith and hope and belief are stuck in denial. Same gravitational vortex here with thoughts and words...interesting the meaning each one carries with it, no?

Which one gets you out of bed?

Well, I, for one, wish you all to wake up tomorrow in massive denial.

-Tsunami-