The difference between wishing and hoping

Hopefully a copy editor won’t remove the poorly chosen word that I’ve stuck at the beginning of this sentence. Hopefully is an adverb that ought to be used only to modify a verb. So why do we keep using it in ways that rightfully have the grammar police all over us, as in “Hopefully, this column will speak to your life”? The biggest reason is because we find it easier to express vague optimism and wishful thinking than to take hope to heart within ourselves. I assume greater personal risk and responsibility when I say, “I hope this column will speak to your life.”

Frederick Buechner believes we have no business preaching about hope unless we’re willing to confront hope in a personal way with enough candor to say what we actually hope for. If we cannot speak of the “darkness and pitiableness of the human condition, including [our] own condition, into which hope brings a glimmer of light,” then there’s little honesty left for the moment. We’ll merely jettison our day-by-day experience for the sake of replacing it with “just the official, doctrinal, [and] biblical reasons” for hope.

Wishing is a flat and powerless venture. I may wish upon a shooting star, or wish for a brand new car. But so what? What does that wishing add up to? Hope goes so much deeper, requiring risk and assuming responsibility. I hope that my life will be a useful one. I hope to be a good person. I hope always to long for things that matter, like seeing to it that the poor have bread, and that I’ll be found with dough on my hands or driving a bread truck.