"Hope is the dream of a waking man" ~ Aristotle
Being Temperamental
Words of despair seem
to be bandied about in many contexts today – the economy (and perhaps our own
personal financial situation), unending wars, inevitable destruction of the
environment, the nastiness of politics, the inhumanity of man toward other human
beings, the starvation of children…indeed, the list alone seems a cause for
despair. And personal despair is on the rise as well – one in four Americans
will develop a mental illness relating to depression and 150 million doctors’
visits a year pertain to that depression. This must not be a new phenomenon,
however. Sometime during the second century B.C.E., Pliny the Elder said, “The
depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure
of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Clearly depression and despair
were understood to be a significant aspect of the human condition even 4000
years ago. But read that sentence again…and note the second half of it particularly.
That phrase smacks of something called hope – and hope is a universal attitude
that gives us eyes to see the world through a different lens. “Despair is
blind. Hope has eyes,” says Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling
series, “Conversations with God.” Hope gives us the courage to face our deepest
fears and our greatest grief. As artists in every genre, our gift, we hope, is
to open the eyes of the despairing to beauty, grace, love, common experience,
compassion and light – to foster hope in others, to remind them that even in
the darkest moments, they are not alone. As Suzanne Collins, author of the
Hunger Games wrote, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.”
HOPE BREAKS
Hope breaks…upon the rocks –
shattered into droplets,
dashing itself against the
unforgiving, immovable crags,
their remote faces rejecting
the pleading grasp of blown spume.
At the height of the tide,
in the fury of the winter storm,
it might almost seem as if
nothing could remain of hope.
Yet when that futile surge
of lost promise slips away,
rebuilding for a new onslaught,
there is a poignant sense of loss,
a bleak feeling of abandonment.
But then, close to despair, I recall
that it is those storm driven tides
which bring the gifts from the sea –
casting them like so much refuse
beyond the coastal drift line,
tossed atop the beveled berm,
treasures revealed only when
the wave draws out to sea again
exposing the blessings in the sand…
laying there amidst the seaweed,
with other trash the sea has swallowed,
are pearly shells, small and large,
the driftwood, the beautiful stones,
a piece of Kelly green sea glass,
perhaps a letter in a blue bottle,
each with its own story to tell
of the challenging voyage
that brought it finally to this shore.
©Lianne Schneider
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