This week I am reading “Small Mercies” from Dennis LeHane. One-hundred-twenty-three pages in, on their first date, as Bobby is walking Carmen to her car…
“He glances sideways once, catches her glancing sideways right back at him with a secretive smile, and he considers the possibility that maybe the opposite of hate is not love. It’s hope. Because hate takes years to build, but hope can come sliding around the corner when you’re not even looking.”
Hope is born and often dies as a feeling, a desire for something more. To take hope from its dormancy to any degree of fruitfulness, requires consideration, care, attention, effort. Of course at this point it is no longer just hope. Layers have been added creating a substantiality that though sprung from hope becomes a seemingly separate entity. It is not. I believe hope is still there; perhaps forgotten but not gone. When I lose sight of the hope that guided my beginning, I am then driven by circumstance and substance and structure, and in this entanglement, my essence is lost. Substantial abundance alone is abundance detached from hope. Substantial abundance connected to hope is, well, hopeful. To come closer and closer to an essential abundance, (though in this lifetime never completely attainable), requires one be driven by hope that is renewed and nourished in every moment by beneficence.
I believe all hope, to an extent, is selfish hope; as dictated by one's Humanity. But the more consideration, nourishment, care, attention, beneficence, effort that is freely given to one's selfish hope, the more unselfish it will become. And the more unselfish the hope, the closer one comes to an essential abundance.
So,
- We cannot lose touch with hope, even if and especially when one finds their self in a state of or approaching substantial abundance; and
- We must nurture our hope and continue to let it drive, even though it will potentially hinder and limit substantial growth and abundance.
Some get around these limitations by believing that hope is having done well. Some believe that substance, (regardless of how it is acquired), equates to a job well done. And some uncap substantial growth by believing that congratulating yourself for a job well done lays a foundation for continued success, and because it is a foundation, they misidentify it, (this righteous, entitled pride), for hope. And though it is a desire for more, in this case the expressed hope is stillborn. And in this case the consideration, care, attention, and lack of effort unfeelingly smothers any hope for hope. And in this case, substantial growth is inversely proportional to essential uncertainty. “I remain steadfast in my conviction that the constancy of uncertainty, the struggle between Goodness and Malevolence, Compassion and Cruelty, Empathy and Indifference, a desire for Justice and a self-serving greed, is necessary for essentiality, which in turn is necessary for survival; and ultimately salvation.”
Yet today we are all about substance and certainty. And today we ignore survival and salvation. And this perspective, this way of life, if it could speak, would argue. It would ask, “why would anyone want to aspire to uncertainty? And how can uncertainty be our savior? Our salvation?” It would declare, “we are more likely to find answers with pride and entitlement, might and right, power and wealth, certainty and oppression. Uncertainty! My God! That would mean asking questions, and talking to people, strangers, who are not us, to seek a consensus. That would mean listening, and working to understand, and compassion, and empathy. That would mean consideration and nourishment and care and attention and beneficence and effort. And what good is all that when the answers are all right here tangled up in our circumstance and substance and structure. My God, man, what are you thinking?”
According to Bobby, “hate takes years to build,” as does the entanglement, the configuration, the justification that supports substantial abundance for the few. According to Bobby, “hope can come sliding around the corner when you’re not even looking.” And hope begets hope. And hope reminds us that maybe we don't know everything; maybe we could make things better. And when hope is detached and forgotten for too long, it is replaced by pride and entitlement and might and right and power and wealth and certainty and oppression; and then ultimately, hate.
Perhaps, at least for practical purposes, hope really is the opposite of hate.
I am thankful for hope.