In the abstract, hope is the idea that tomorrow lived, will be better
than today. In actuality, hope is avoiding getting that today lived, is
as good as it gets.
When I tell
the truth
about it, for the most part I don't
listen
"No hope" / "There's no hope" as something empowering, as something
revelationary, or even as something breathtakingly
transformative.
Rather I
listen
"No hope" / "There's no hope" as if it brings into focus a dark place
ahead which delineates the end of possibility. If there's no hope, I'm
stuck, there's no forward motion, nothing good can come from the
present situation. While this view of "no hope" may be
dictionary-ready, it doesn't articulate the problem. The problem lies
in living today as if hope is viable, a possibility,
a source of power
for tomorrow. And the problem in living today in hope for tomorrow, is
it distracts from / blinds me to the OK-ness, the alright-ness, the
miracle
today already really is.
When I look forward in hope and find it doesn't materialize (it hardly
ever does: isn't today just more of the same as yesterday, if not a bit
more intense?), hope has failed me. And that old, pithy adage would
have us believe "Hope is like peeing in your pants: it doesn't do you
much good but it gives you a nice warm feeling.". Hope is one of those
tired old concepts we keep around simply because we've already kept it
around for so long, that by now it's ingrained effortlessly and
unexamined in the
epistemology.
When there's no hope, it isn't a problem until we say it's a
problem. But the problem is in not getting that who we are, right
now, is enough. Hope isn't required. If getting who we really are,
right now, is enough (that's transformation), hope distracts. In terms
of living life transformed, it just gets in our way. Said another way,
realizing there's no hope is one of the most powerful
accesses
we have to living in the now.
So I ask myself: did hope fail me? And if so, where / when / how did it
fail me? What I see is that hope didn't fail me. Rather it's I who
manipulated hope as a way of avoiding whatever it is that I don't like
about what's going on in the present ie it's I who failed hope. I hope
things will change. I sincerely hope for something better. I hope for
deliverance. I hope the future brings something different. I hope for
anything but more of the same as there is now. But the
problem with that, is it blinds me to something fundamental: there
is no hope.
The universe
offers no hope.
The universe
only offers now. My looking for a way out ie my hope that
there's a way out blinds me to a startling
truth:
this is IT!
If I don't first deal with / come from / live life grounded in
"this is IT"
now / in this present moment, then how can the future not just be more
of the same ie just a lot more of "this isn't IT"? Hope
didn't fail me. It's I who failed hope. Don't rationalize this. Try it
on for size. Experience it. This isn't just a debate, an argument.
This is hardball. This is a
graduate
conversation.
When I live coming from the possibility that
"this is IT",
what starts to emerge is that in deploying hope, I avoid the actuality
of the present. But it's more than that. It's waaay more
than that really. It's that even if there is / was
something to hope for that's qualitatively better than
this,
it's a requirement that in order to appreciate it fully, I first have
to master being with
this,
right now, exactly the way it is (isn't it obvious that any hope, once
materialized, soon becomes
this
too, right now, exactly the way it is?). That's the
Zentyranny
of it all. And once I've mastered the
this,
right now, exactly the way it is, hope is a redundancy. Life isn't
lived tomorrow. Life is lived today, now. Living in hope is an
anathema. To live in hope is to be blind to
"this is IT"
today ie now.
There's no hope. Really there isn't.
This is IT.
You don't like that? Too bad.