Some etymological gymnastics: the word hope is from the Olde English hopian “wish” which is from the Proto Germanic wunskijanan “to strive after,” strive being from the Old French estriver “to quarrel” and after the OE aefter “following in time” … To summarize: to hope → to wish → to strive after → to quarrel + following in time → to hope.
However, finding that to hope = TQ+FIT only leads one to examine TQ+FIT. Maybe it means to quarrel with the sequential nature of events, and therefore with time itself. If one hopes to get a job, for example, or hopes to get a Wii, isn’t one simply being frustrated with the fact that whatever one wants to happen hasn’t yet happened? Following this, hope is then less concerned with the not having of some thing and more with the not having of that thing yet. But we know hope’s not that simple. There’s a difference between the material and the ethereal, and the feeling of hope (or the despair of not-hope) is quite different from feeling impatient.
Which is why, when hoping, we often gaze into the distance in that way that means that we’re really gazing into ourselves. To wit, our most recent visual appropriation of hope: the Obama poster. O is gazing up (up = toward the sky, the source of so many dreams) but he does not seem to be focusing on anything. His left eye in particular seems turned inward, as if he, hoping maybe, is frustrated with the often glacial pace and infrequency of actual change for the better. What is also curious about the image is what was left out: in the original photo, Obama is sitting next to George Clooney. Why O wasn’t looking at Clooney is beyond me. That guy’s dreamy.