Of Hope
Life is an endless struggle!
A struggle to strive for a bright future regardless of how bad is the present, a struggle to stop the futile efforts, which are begetting more frustration than progress and more confusion than clarity, a struggle to renew the fight against a ruthless design, in which the smallest sign of weakness becomes a opportunity for all the well intended people to show their superiority and all the hateful ones to strike where it hurts the most, and a struggle to stay alive against the certainty and the randomness of death…
“What motivates these seemingly vain struggles?” Many times I asked myself that question. There are many small answers, but one answer stands out, one upon which agree all intelligent and normal people, and it is “hope”. Everyone agrees to say that hope is the reason and the justification, and that hope is the indispensable fuel for life and a possible bright future. But does everyone agree on how hope looks like, smells like, sounds like, tastes like, or feels like?
“Hope is believing that things will get better when everything indicates the opposite.
Hope is standing by the shore and waiting for the wave that will bring to you a beautiful and loving mermaid.
Hope is contemplating a dry land, lying fallow, and seeing it green and overflowing with vegetables and fruits.
Hope is walking by an empty shop, with its owner standing by the door bored and desperate for any business and imagining him busy, with a big smile on his face, attending to hundreds of customers, who are buying everything he has to offer.
Hope is meeting, in the street, a wretched and poor homeless, and addressing him as if he were a beautiful, powerful, and well-dressed king, sitting on his golden throne, in his magnificent palace.
Hope is witnessing a woman dying while giving birth and being consoled by the infant that will continue her mother’s journey.
Hope is losing those you love, without shedding a tear, convinced that love is not tributary of their ephemeral bodies, but of their eternal souls.
Hope is living in a country torn by civil war, occupied, and wounded, walking along side its agonizing population, and envisioning them at the apogee of their glory and prosperity.
Hope is crossing a destroyed town, plunged into darkness, deserted from everyone except rats and corpses, and feeling that you are wandering in one of the most beautiful cities, with lights shining along the sidewalks, and streets crowded with people marveled by the beauty of their surroundings.
Hope is meeting a young man in the spring of his life, full of ambition and pride buried under the rubble of war, ignorance and barbarity, and picturing him a successful adult man, and a father of a happy family in a civilized country.
Hope is looking for a treasure in every hole we dig, for intelligence in every mind we cross, and for kindness in every soul we meet.
Hope is laying a hand on the thread that separates life from death and being able to say: “this is the end of a life, and the start of another, and I am the only link.”
Hope is ... “
Stop! Think! Is this really “hope”?
Not quite! This is rather the “fantasy of hope” or simply “few wishful illusions”.
Hope in reality is a path paved with promising dreams, a naively enthusiastic ambition, and a strong gullible belief in the existence of the twin sisters: magic and miracle and their brother: good luck. We walk this path all our lives with the unfulfilled expectation of discovering a future brighter than our present.
Hope in reality is a journey of hard work, continuous suffering, constant fear, many disillusions, and more illusions, leading with the passing time to the awaiting death.
No one has said it better than the greatest of them all, Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of mankind.”