Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.

Kerr defines hope not as naïve optimism but as a psychological hinge: the belief that one’s present emotional state—grief, fear, despair, even exhilaration—will change. The line captures a common human experience: feelings can seem total and timeless while we are inside them, and hope is the counter-sense that time and circumstance will alter what now feels fixed. By phrasing it as “the feeling that the feeling… isn’t permanent,” she emphasizes emotional impermanence and resilience rather than external guarantees. The wit of the recursive wording also mirrors how hope often works—small, self-referential, and internal—yet powerful enough to keep a person moving forward.