A journey of a thousand miles begins with a belief, they say.
But isn't belief sometimes just hope wearing another name?
And sometimes, hope isn't salvation.
Sometimes, it is the beautiful lie
that keeps us from facing reality.

A fatal delusion.
It paints your life in beautiful colours of deception,
feeding you sweet fruits
that leave a bitter aftertaste.

So you begin the journey.
The road winds endlessly before you,
disappearing beyond bends
your eyes cannot reach.

Yet you keep going,
because somewhere beyond the next bend
you believe there is something waiting.
Another bend.
Another distance covered.
Another almost there.

And there, beneath the horizon,
stands a solitary tree.
You imagine its shade.
Its shelter.
The rest you will finally find
when you reach it.
So you pedal.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Because you believe that with more effort, you will finally arrive.

Until reality finally pierces
those clouds of delusion,
scraping away the rainbow of deception.
And suddenly,
the colours disperse.

Everything looks different.
The world turns grey.
Dark.
Empty.
And you realise it's a dead end.
An endless, repeating cycle of a mirage that keeps moving further away the closer you get .

Perhaps belief isn't the enemy.
Perhaps the danger lies in believing
what we desperately wish were true.
Because sometimes,
the hardest thing isn't losing hope.
It's realizing that what we called hope
was never hope at all.