Hope
There’s a popular form of meditation called “loving-kindness”. It originates from Buddhism and has become more widely known outside religious circles due to the proliferation of meditation apps, YouTube videos, and so on. In a loving-kindness meditation, a person mentally sends goodwill, kindness, and general positivity to others (even enemies, though of course that word isn’t used) through the silent repetition of mantras.
This is the opposite of that: a collection of fairly low level curses to wish on people when your feelings are far too heightened to engage in any kind of positive thinking about them. If you’re feeling particularly strongly, these curses may make you feel a bit better, or you can use them as inspiration to create your own.
1. I hope you get something stuck in your gum, right at the back, and nothing you do will dislodge it, and you can’t stop touching it with your tongue, which then starts to ache.
2. I hope you keep forgetting what you were just about to do, and almost, but not quite, remembering.
3. I hope you didn’t check the pockets and washed your clothes with tissues.
4. I hope someone you admire calls you by the name of someone you don’t really like.
5. I hope your shoelaces keep coming undone.
6. I hope it’s only after you’ve poured the milk in your tea or coffee that you realise it’s gone off.
7. I hope that after guests have been, you realise there was visible poo stuck in the toilet bowl or under the seat that you forgot to clean, and you know all your guests went to the loo.
8. I hope you start to get slightly self-conscious about a trivial aspect of your behaviour, like your handwriting or your gait, causing you to act very strangely.
9. I hope you spot two clothes moths shortly after each other, but no more, and spend the next few months actively hunting for where they’ve come from, finding nothing, only for another two to appear once you’ve finally relaxed.
10. I hope that by the time you spot your typos, it’s far too late.
11. I hope you forget to adjust the heating or have a timing mishap so that you arrive home to it being either freezing or disgustingly hot.
12. I hope you overhear a whole cascade of spoilers for the TV programme you’re really enjoying.
13. I hope that right at the end of the day or night you realise that your clothes are actually quite transparent in the light you’ve been in for hours.
14. I hope you get so many spam texts and phone calls that you no longer feel any delight in wondering who a message or call is from.
15. I hope you can’t remember whether or not you brushed your teeth.
16. I hope your flow state keeps eluding you.
17. I hope your favourite house plants suddenly start wilting and everything you do is the wrong thing to do.
18. I hope your morning hot drink slightly burns the tip of your tongue and you’re aware of it the whole day.
19. I hope you step on a mollusc.
20. I hope the novel you’re enjoying reading has such a disappointing ending that the whole book will feel blighted.
21. I hope you only remember that there’s no toilet roll when the situation is far from ideal.
22. I hope the smoke alarm starts malfunctioning loudly just as you’re nicely settled in bed.
23. I hope that all the items of cutlery or crockery you need are dirty.
24. I hope you find something that definitely looks like a mouse dropping in the house, but see no other signs.
25. I hope you accidentally burp or fart at a professional meeting or event.
26. I hope your app crashes just before it finishes recording your walk, run, a speech, etc.
27. I hope the transport you use smells quite bad and afterwards you start to suspect from other people’s micro-reactions that your clothes have absorbed the smell, but they haven’t, but everyone sees you smelling yourself in a strange manner instead.
28. I hope you keep getting distracted by ridiculously trivial preoccupations, like whether to colour code your book shelves or how to arrange your plants or ornaments slightly differently, to the detriment of the things that matter in your life.
29. I hope all the pictures in your house keep going skewiff.
30. I hope you lose your daily “streak” in whatever productivity or self-help app you’re using.
31. I hope a cat that doesn’t belong to you rushes into your home when you’re on the verge of running late, and it’s tricky to get it out without traumatising it, and you’re pretty sure you saw fleas on it.
32. I hope you suddenly find someone who irritates you a bit attractive and you’re both appalled with yourself and very confused.
33. I hope that your favourite musician/actor/whoever says something you really disagree with and you just can’t enjoy their work in the same way any more.
34. I hope everything tastes just a bit off.
35. I hope you spend ages de-waxing your ear phones, then discover they aren’t your ear phones.
36. I hope you have a dream where you behaved badly and you feel slightly ashamed by your dream behaviour all day.
37. I hope you’re either too hot or too cold and nothing you do can help you reach a pleasant temperature.
38. I hope your baggage doesn’t appear on the carousel until right at the end.
39. I hope that it’s only after you start the book/film/episode that you were really looking forward to that you realise you’ve already seen/read/heard it.
40. I hope every animal you try to pet lets you know how unwanted your advances are.
41. I hope every message you’re expecting is significantly delayed by just enough that you start to feel a bit paranoid and then berate yourself for being paranoid whilst still feeling it.
42. I hope the water pressure goes really bad when you’re in the middle of a shower, having just lathered up.
43. I hope you go down a really pointless rabbit hole and waste multiple days being obsessed with something, only to feel deep shame afterwards about how interested you were in something that is incredibly boring or irrelevant because you’ll never get those wasted hours back.
44. I hope your fairy lights fuse and your candles won’t stay lit.
45. I hope that when you go to meet others, someone is wearing exactly the same article of clothing as you, and they’re wearing it much, much better.
46. I hope someone accidentally puts salt in your coffee instead of sugar.
47. I hope you keep having to stop what you’re doing because you’re on the brink of a sneeze, but it never arrives.
48. I hope you send the text to the wrong person and it’s cringeworthy and you know they’ll show others and there is nothing at all that you can do about it.
49. I hope the lightbulbs stop working at the most inopportune moment.
50. I hope you have a great idea—the best you’ve ever had—and you forget it after being distracted, and you know it’s never coming back.
51. I hope you confuse tablespoons and teaspoons and only discover you’ve ruined the meal you’ve spent ages on when you sit down to eat it.
52. I hope you can’t get a really annoying song out of your head.
53. I hope that your windows get condensation.
54. I hope that the item that was in stock when you checked just before you left to go to the store is now definitely out of stock.
55. I hope the buds of those beautiful flowers you bought never open.
