Tell me something honestly—how many times have you whispered to yourself: “Someday…”?

Someday, I’ll have enough money.
Someday, I’ll be happy.
Someday, I’ll meet the right person.
Someday, life will finally make sense.
Someday, I’ll live my me-me.

Don’t lie. You’ve carried those “somedays” like a secret pet inside your chest. You feed them crumbs of excuses. You rock them to sleep with fantasies. You dress them up with words like “faith” or “patience.” You treat them like they’re alive. But if you’re brutally honest, you’d see it: those hopes aren’t running, they’re not even walking. They’re lying flat on a hospital bed, hooked up to machines, barely breathing. They’re on life support. And maybe… if you really face it… some of them already died years ago. You just never had the courage to admit you buried them.

We all have them. The jackpot hope: “One day I’ll win big, and then everything will change.” The career hope: “Next year my boss will finally notice me.” The romantic hope: “When I get married, then life will finally start.” And the most poisonous one: “When the universe—or God—decides, then my life will change.” We never say it out loud, but deep down we bargain with the sky: “If you give me this job, I’ll finally be good.” Or we stare at a lottery ticket like it’s a prayer bead: “Just this once, maybe luck will finally smile on me.” But tell me, how many years have you been whispering that same bargain? Five? Ten? Twenty? Back when your head was covered in black hair, you carried those hopes. And now, with gray streaking through, you’re still carrying them. Babysitting them. Protecting them from the truth. Isn’t it humiliating? To live decades repeating the same lullaby to a hope that never grows?

Walk through a cemetery if you dare. Read the dates. Touch the stones if you can. Do you know what’s buried along with the bodies? Mountains of unfulfilled hopes. Men who always said: “Next year, I’ll finally start that business.” Women who whispered: “Someday, he’ll change, and then I’ll be happy.” Young people who swore: “One day I’ll chase my dream… when I have time.” But that “someday” never came. The coffin slammed shut, and with it all their dumb hopes. What makes you think you’re different? What makes you think the soil has not already claimed the ones you keep alive only in your imagination? We are alone even in a crowd, scrolling through group chats, seeing everyone laughing in pictures we weren’t tagged in, wondering if we exist at all.

Hope is not always a virtue. Sometimes, it is a drug. It sedates you. It keeps you docile. It fools you into believing you’re “on the way,” when really you’re chained to the same spot. You sit in traffic while staring at your phone, scrolling the lives of strangers who seem to be moving, while you remain frozen. You scroll, hoping that life will show up for you while you stay glued to your illusions. Every year, the life-support machine keeps beeping in the background of your soul: beep—someday, beep—someday, beep—someday. But here’s the punchline: “someday” never comes.

Imagine yourself as a child standing at the edge of a stormy ocean. You wait for the waves to calm, believing that only then can you wade in. But the storm is not a visitor—it is life itself. Waiting for it to end is like trying to hold back the tides with your bare hands. Yet this is exactly what you do. You wait for clarity, for luck, for someone to hand you permission to live. You lull yourself with prayers and affirmations, as if words alone could revive the corpse of hope in your chest. You whisper: “Someday, I’ll be ready.” You rock it, you nurture it, you dress it with holy intentions. And all the while, the storm laughs at your patience.

The world is full of those who never unplugged their machines. The ones who waited for the sky to answer, while their own hearts rusted in silence. There was the man who kept a ledger of dreams he never started, marking each year with someday. There was the woman who polished the illusion of her perfect life while rotting inside, hoping her partner would suddenly see her worth. There are countless faces, countless stories, all breathing machines, all waiting, waiting, waiting.

Don’t get me wrong. Real hope exists. Real hope is alive. Real hope moves. It sweats. It bleeds. It grows. Real hope pushes. It doesn’t wait. It doesn’t whisper “someday”—it shouts, “Today.” Real hope plants seeds even when the soil looks barren. It waters them while the storm pours. It climbs mountains, wades through rivers, builds bridges when no one is watching. This is the hope that lives. This is the hope that rises from ashes, unhooked from machines, running free.

I tell you this because I lived it. I carried my own hope like a relic. “Maybe when the storm clears, I’ll be the man I was meant to be.” But the storm never cleared. You know why? Because life is the storm. Waiting for it to end is waiting for the impossible. One day, staring into the mirror, I realized: I wasn’t waiting for the storm to end—I was waiting for myself to come back. But myself wasn’t gone. He was trapped. Gagged. Bound. And he wasn’t waiting for God, or luck, or a jackpot—he was waiting for me. And freeing him didn’t require miracles. It required honesty. It required unplugging the fake hope and facing the truth: no one was coming to rescue me.

So let me ask you—how much time have you already wasted on dumb hopes? How many years has your real self been hooked up to those life-support machines? And what will it take for you to finally unplug the lies? Another heartbreak? Another job loss? Another illness? Another grave in your family? Why wait for catastrophe to do what you already know you must?

Picture yourself years from now, lying in your grave. The soil presses down. Your family walks away. It’s just you and the silence. And in that silence, you whisper: “Someday…” But the earth does not answer. That is where dumb hopes end—in dirt, in silence, in a place where action is no longer possible.

Stop embalming your false hopes like corpses. Stop rocking them in the cradle of excuses. Kill the fake ones now so the true ones can finally breathe. Hope is not meant to be on life support. Hope is meant to be alive—running, sweating, bleeding, planting, fighting, changing. And if you don’t resuscitate it today, one day you’ll realize—it wasn’t hope that was dying. It was you.

Next Week : Chapter 6 : The Illusion That Money Frees.