You Epi lol. You made a good point here I think. Perhaps Epicurus was speaking more about hedonism here ~ too much desiring, too much over-the-top hoping. When we focus too much on what we do not have, we lose focus and the truth of what we do already have.
I do not think that hoping for something is necessarily wrong unless we are wasting time and energy on something which we, on some level, know that we can never have but we choose to ignore the truth of it.
But I do intuit that there is such a thing as too much hope and not enough going after…
I think that Epi was basically talking about balance here…the epicurean as opposed to the hedonist…the fine balance of enjoying perhaps something lesser but good now as opposed to craving it all and not appreciating THIS moment.
I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite.
And while I rise from my own globe to others
And penetrate ever further through the eternal field,
That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me.
“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshiping.”