We hope, we despair, and then we hope again — that is how we stay afloat in the cosmos of uncertainty that is any given life. Just as the universe exists because, by some accident of chance we are yet to fathom, there is more matter than antimatter in it, we exist — and go on existing — because there is more hope than despair in us. In this capacity, hope might be our greatest evolutionary adaptation — the mitochondria of our spiritual metabolism, the opposable thumb of our grip on life. Today on The Marginalian, Nobel laureate John Steinbeck explores this adaptive function of hope and its true meaning from an uncommonly illuminating perspective. Find it at themarginalian.org.