a different sort of hope

“There is a hope that doesn’t disappoint,” Hebrews tells us. Not “hope doesn’t disappoint” but there’s “A hope that doesn’t disappoint.” A very specific and particular hope, the Christian hope: new heavens and new earth, new creation, restoration and renewal, all that. I am a Christian, and thus—for better or worse—I place my hope in that future, of God’s final victory, of peace and justice drowning the cosmos. That hope has gotten me through many a dark night. But Hebrews doesn’t tell us about hope in general, and there’s no guarantee of finding true love.

We can work for it, wish for it, pray for it, but can we hope for it?

Maybe the answer lies in mathematics. If the world’s governed by mathematics, why not take the quest there? We have, on the one hand, the sheer and unfettered reality that most who hope for true love never find, and we see that most of those who’ve claimed to found it find themselves quite soon miserable and choking on disillusionment; and then we find, keeping us quite far from any simple answers, the fact that some people do experience true love, as I’ve defined it before). Mathematics leads us nowhere; how ‘bout mathematics, a matter of weighing costs? Is the cost of having hope worse than not? As much as hope may be an opiate, so long as you’re unaware of its fallacy, you’ll be ignorant, able to find endurance, and you’ll enjoy life a bit more. The cost of not having hope… Well, it just leads to bitterness, despair, and a general atmosphere of doom and gloom while monsters haunt you in your sleep (think “Pitch Black” meets Venus).

Believe a lie, be happy.

Embrace reality, be nauseated by the state-of-the-world.

But life without hope is no life at all. No matter your thoughts on the subject, hope’s an essential element in the human person. Every religion has a certain hope, something to keep us moving forward. Perhaps primitive peoples, faced with the nature of the world, its harshness and senselessness and cruelty (they had to face-off with smilodons!), maybe they spun religions to give themselves, their spirits, some rejuvenation. Like some spiders spin web to cocoon themselves from predations, so our ancestors donned religion to do likewise. And perhaps we’re just continuing this escapist technique, in fiction and fairy-tales, except now we know the difference (for the most part). Do I actually believe this? No, though I can definitely see its merit. I cling to the Christian hope like a baby clutching its blankie, and if you want to call me naively crazy, feel free: I’m well aware how this may look to some people, but don’t exalt yourself over me, since you do the same thing but in different ways. Faced with the uncertainty of all things and the misery of all things, like a panther crouched at the door waiting to tear us apart at the next opportune time, a certain eschatological hope that all this will change refreshes and rejuvenates the soul. But, again: this matter doesn’t address the issue at hand. And we’re back where we started; these meandering tangents can be fruitful or pointless, and I never know which ‘till I get to where I’m going, which is, most of the time, unclear; hooray for free-thought writing).

What I’m looking for is a different sort of hope, a REALISTIC hope (if there is such a thing). “True Love”, as defined by Disney and medieval hangovers, can’t be hoped for. It’s a caricature of the real thing, bloated like a waterlogged corpse by the prim and proper of our whims and fancies. This view on true love—you know, the perfect and easy and unchanging love which the world is helpless against—is a raging typhoon of nonsense and stupidity. I hoped in that “once upon a time” (to carry on the fairy-tale theme), but I learned my lesson when reality decked me across the face (“The deeper the delusion, the deeper the sting.”). But true love, the real kind of love founded on commitment, sacrifice, selflessness, that kind of love, the genuine kind of love, can be hoped for, because such love—though rare and difficult—can and does happen. But how do we hope for something that remains, despite our protests, uncertain?

There’s a way to hope for something without letting it consume you. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” the saying goes. Hopes tend to disappoint, so scatter your hopes across the waters. One might go somewhere. Don’t let yourself slip too far into the hope, so that its disappointment ruins your life. If life without true love is a life of misery by virtue of being absent of true love, then you might as well call it a day, ‘cause chances are, you’ll just be miserable. There are other things that bring joy and purpose (though, sadly, these, too, are uncertain). Don’t bloat the object of your hope into some insurmountable peak, don’t infuse it with trimmings borne of fancy; keep the hope realistic. But what does that look like? The fog seems hesitant to lift.