Nice of you to say this, thank you! And yes, I go with "dents". :-)

I'm not sure I would phrase it the way you do and speak of hope as something that distorts the way reality is or how it appears. Hope, like expectation, is a ways to sense the future (like perception is one for snesing the present, and remebrance one for sensing the past). I prefer to call hope a sense organ, something by which we can "see" the future and bring it into the present. It conveys a sense of possibility, and in doing that helps prevent the present from becoming literal and one-sided. With hope we are able to not fall into the trap of unambiguousness and unequivocalness. Which is necessary because when times become literal and unambiguous, they become violent and belligerent. A sense of ambivalence, of varieties of possibilities, is needed to keep peace present in a period of time. Thus I wasn't talking how hope distorts (or may distort) our view on reality, but what may be seen (or what may be perceivable) when hope is not interfering.

cc #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten