Hope

Last week, my sister and I saw the new Batman movie. There was a punishment where people were dropped into a deep pit, a literal hell on earth. It was inescapable, but the sky was visible from the depths of the pit. This was to enhance the suffering, one of the characters said, because without hope there could be no true despair.

I wonder about thus. I usually think of hope as a protective factor against despair, giving me a reason to fight on. However, continually hoping and continually being disappointed in those hopes is perhaps a much deeper form of suffering than having no hope at all.

Consider a man who cannot beat his weightbon his legs if he holds onto hope, he will repeatedly stand and fall, accruing bruises and despair as his legs crumble time and time again. The man with no hope will stay down and thus, he only has to fall once. After that, he is safe because there is nowhere left to fall. Resting a cheek against rock bottom can be comforting because it absolves us of the responsibility to keep fighting in the face of the fear of failure. When we stop hoping, we allow ourselves to give up.

While sometimes giving up on the impossible is adaptive, we often mistake for impossible what is merely improbable. Thus subtle distinction lies at the heart of the decision to hope. If we give up on the improbable, we save ourselves the trouble of pain and disappointment and dashed expectations. However, we also rob ourselves of truly living.

Safety is important, but in large doses, it can be stifling, suffocating, smothering. In falling and rising, we gain toughness and strength so that one day we can rise for good. When we stop hoping we are essentially saying that comfort is more important than fulfillment and that we value the avoidance of pain more than the pursuit of life.

I'll close with a favorite quote from Vaclev Havel: "Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same ad joy that things are going well or willingness to invest on enterprises that are obviously headed for success but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."

change

I've been thinking a lot about change lately. It's an interesting thing, ever present and unavoidable.

Sometimes, change is sudden. An iron curtain falls down and splits reality into "then" and "now." Sometimes it sneaks up so slowly that we don't even notice it creeping closer and closer. Sometimes change is voluntary and effortful, and sometimes it is violent and forced and unwelcome. Sometimes change is progressive and we march triumphantly forwards, and sometimes it is regressive and doesn't look like change at all because it is a return to a familiar past.

About all that I know about change is that it is constant and unstoppable-- the force that breathes life into our years. We may beg for it or we may fear it, but we cannot avoid it. It usually looks different than we expected, and sometimes it is more brilliant even than our highest hopes.

Change is not an intention-- it is movement. It does not live in our heads but in our action or inaction. Seek to hide from it, and its ugly sister--stagnation--will find you. This, too, is a kind of change, a change into something smaller and sadder and weaker. We must be mindful of our tendency to change and hook our efforts onto directing this change towards growth, towards progress, towards our dreams and goals.

We will never be done, but we are rewarded for each step we take. The distant dream is not a mirage-- it is as real as you or me. It may seem to get further and further away, but that is only because as we approach it, we gain a truer understanding of what we are seeking. Where we were once aiming only to be good, we now understand that we must strive to be better. Not better than those around us but better than our nagging sense of doubt convinces us we can be.

So I will keep walking this road of eternal change all the days of my life, hoping to be transformed into something beautiful and honest and real.