Do you hope for the best and prepare for the worst?

I watched the film "33" last night. The film may not win any awards, but it had some revealing and believable scenes about human behavior under stress. One particular scene struck me as inspirational. Here is how I recall it.

At one point, the miners were arguing about whether they would be saved or not. They had been in the mine for several days and their spirits were on edge. Most of the miners were convinced they would not be saved, ergo, eat all the food now, why ration it for an event that might never happen. One miner argued that they would be rescued. 

The other minors argued that he could not absolutely know they would be rescued. He said of course, but we have a choice and I choose hope. Hope is like that. If you have a choice and neither choice is absolute, why not make the deliberate choice of hope. The chance of them being rescued was small, even the rescuers on the surface knew the chance was small. For me that was a special moment. Hope should defy logic. It should defy odds. And contrary to the pragmatists who always come down on the side of statistics, hope does not always raise unreachable expectations. Even the lottery has a winner.

My mantra has always been hope for the best and prepare for the worst. The miners rationed the food and all 33 miners made it out alive.

Hope is alive and well in the human spirit, as it should be. But it is a deliberate choice. From now on, I choose hope.