National Geographic, writing about an Inuit group, described a young man who had killed a polar bear by himself. This is a great accomplishment, one of the greatest available in the culture. Shortly thereafter he killed himself. The journal suggested, based on I know not what personal evidence, that this was in part because he had nothing more to look forward to, that everything in life after this was going to be anticlimax.
It seems a waste of time to try to define hope in some non-circular way–I’ll take it as understood. The object and ground of hope vary.
If your hope is in personal accomplishment, as defined in your culture, what remains for you if your pinnacle is in your youth? You can rest on your laurels, but not hope. Or suppose some impediment prevents accomplishment forever. You need a different target of hope–easy to say, not easy to manage.
My career in physics is over, as far as I can foresee. I cannot hope that what I have helped do will endure, for in large part the results we found are already superseded by more complete studies. I’m hardly alone in this–the same is true for police or soldiers or doctors. Whatever you have done, there will be new crimes, reenergized enemies, fresh diseases. Somebody else has to deal with those. You can hope that they will cope, but that depends on them. You can hope you’ve prepared your children for what lies ahead, but that too depends on them.
There’s hope that depends on my accomplishments, and hope that depends on others’.
There seems also to be another hope–a hope in the graces for the next day. “Graces” because I don’t, or only partly, earn them. It’s a more humble hope–that even if there is nothing I can do or say, I can still enjoy a new day. It’s a humble trust that what I do and trust in will be met with grace. Both my parents died of dementia, which doesn’t augur well for my future, but both seemed to rejoice as best they could in each new day they had, whatever the pains that came with it might be.
We don’t do much without hope. Discouraging reasonable hope in children is a crime. Some hopes are unreasonable–the third son of the peasant is not going to marry a princess–but we tell stories about them anyway, maybe because sometimes their hope shouldn’t be unreasonable. (I don’t remember nearly as many stories about the simpleton marrying the princess, but they’re there too. Wicked hopes are to be defeated, of course.)
I am reminded of a Deep Space Nine episode wherein an egotistical scientist succeeded in reviving a dead star--and arranged his own death because he knew he could never top the achievement. I DID pity him, because the moment he died he lost his intellect and affability, leaving only his ego.
ReplyDeleteGandalf tells the assembled Captains of the West, as they prepare to
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Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
(Lord of the Rings, Book V)
There was a part of my job that trained me for this slowly over the years. Sick and dangerous people have to be watched 24/7. When my shift was over I had to entrust the task to another - the job was no longer mine, at least for the next sixteen hours.
When Hank Aaron retired from baseball, he went into auto sales. (And an autographed baseball coming with the car was a nice bonus for many buyers)
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