After Prometheus stole fire for mankind, Zeus decided to punish humanity by bestowing upon it a “beautiful evil.” She was Pandora, a name that meant “all-gifted,” because after Hephaestus created her, each of the gods bestowed upon her a gift. Aphrodite made her tempting, giving her an irresistible beauty. Hermes gave her a deceitful nature and the gift of persuasion. Hera gave her curiosity. Ares gave her a fiery spirit. Athena taught her how to dance. Apollo taught her to sing. Zeus gave her a box (actually, it was a jar, but that’s kind of irrelevant) and told her to never open it. When the gods were happy with their creation, they presented her to Epimethius and, because it seemed like a good idea at the time, he immediately married her.

They lived together for a while, but eventually the inevitable happened: somebody opened the box. Pretty much everyone saw it coming (even Epimethius’s brother, who basically told him so) but Pandora and Epimethius were shocked, shocked to discover that inside the box that the gods had given them was every evil the gods could muster: sickness, old age, death, crime, jealousy, hunger, lies, and adjustable rate mortgages.

Quickly, Pandora raced to slam the lid back down upon the box but, as is so often the case, it was too late. Almost all of the evil had escaped into the world and would plague mankind for the rest of time. Here’s where it gets interesting: there was something that had not escaped from the box; an evil that remained. Hope remained.

When we hear this story, we often try to take comfort from it. No matter how many evils we face in the world, we can always rely on the one ray of light still in the box. We can always rely on hope.

I want you to think about that for a moment.

Pandora was a punishment. She was beautiful. She was persuasive. She was graceful. The gifts the gods gave her were not to make her better, but to make her worse. She was given a box of pure evil. Not “mostly” evil. Not “kinda” evil. It wasn’t a box designed to prank mankind. Zeus wasn’t hiding in a van, eating donuts with a producer, chilling out until it was time to jump out and yell, “You just got punked!” It was divine retribution.

The Greeks believed, you see, that hope was just as insidious an evil as hunger. Just as infectious as disease. Just as devastating as war. For the Greeks, hope belonged in that box for a reason. Hope for hope’s sake is a delusion. Hope for hope’s sake was one of those evils.

Hope is addictive. It’s contagious. It is, just as Pandora was, a beautiful evil. It is something we cannot bring ourselves to do without. It is no less dangerous or less manipulative just because it feels good.

Back in the 70s, researchers did a test – often quoted – where they gave monkeys a choices between food and cocaine. The monkeys became so addicted that they refused to eat and would have starved to death had the experiment not been terminated. Hope is a drug. In moderation, fine. I’m not going to judge. I’ve done worse.

But it’s not real, and what’s worse, it’s blinding.

Just because you hope, doesn’t mean something is going to happen. I hope I win the lottery, but planning my retirement around a jackpot is utterly absurd. I hope I get home tonight, but if I don’t fill up the tank I’m going to run out of gas. I hope that hurricane turns, because I certainly haven’t prepared for it. I hope I don’t get caught. I hope my Enron stock is still good.

Hope is little more than a word and an emotion. It contains no substance. It has no meaning. Hope itself is a myth. It is one of those beautiful evils. You cannot build your life around hope. At some point you are going to need food and a place to live. And if you really want things to be good, you’re going to want not just hope, but a car and a job and friends and a 401k.

I rather think that hope is a message of inaction. It is a message that placates us. It lures us into a false sense of calm, security, and optimism. There is, after all, no reason to do something if you hope everything works itself out somehow. It gets into your head. Under your skin. It saps your strength and your will.

If happiness is the food of the soul then hope is an empty calorie. It keeps you going but it does not nourish. It has no substance. It is hollow. We need the protein in action, the starch in good planning, the vitamins of experience, the minerals of patience, and maybe a contingency or two for dessert.

I’m not saying we need to panic or despair. I’m saying that when people offer you hope, they aren’t actually offering you anything of substance. You have to dig deeper. You have to ask what you’re supposed to be hoping for. Are you hoping that everything will be okay, without doing anything to solve the problem? Are you doing something you normally would never do, and hoping you aren’t making a mistake? Are you repeating a mistake you’ve made before, but hoping this time will be different? If you take hope out of the equation, is any of that really a good idea?

In this world, the only people we have to rely on are ourselves. Hope does not change that. A bad idea is a bad idea, no matter how much you hope it isn’t. Bad things will happen, regardless of how much you hope they don’t. Life goes on, regardless of whether you are hopeful or not. In the end, hope doesn’t actually change anything. You have to ask yourself, will this really work? Will the plan succeed? Is the idea a good one? And if the answer is “no” you have to stand up and do something about it.

Because hope alone won’t change anything.

There are people out there who offer hope. They offer change. They offer optimism. They offer vision. They offer peace. None of these things by themselves mean anything. They are platitudes. They are empty.

I will have hope when I am confidant in our solutions. I will support change when we shift from a bad policy to a good one. I will be optimistic when the country is moving in the right direction. I will embrace your vision when it is coherent and well-conceived. I eagerly await a day when we can have peace without giving up that which make us Americans. But none of these noble goals will blind me to the fact that these notions are meaningless without some deeper message. Meaningless hope is delusion. Meaningless change is chaos. Meaningless confidence is arrogance. Meaningless optimism is gambling. Meaningless peace is surrender.

It has to mean something. We need more than just hope. We need real plans. We don’t need random changes, we need prudent change. We don’t need blind optimism, we need real recovery. We don’t need appeasement, we need safety. What we need is not a mindless emotion. What we need is not empty. What we need is not hollow. What we need is not a speech, or a politician, or a flag.

What we need is real leadership.