unhope

hope is for those who have none. for it will surely never come. those who seek it, do so in vain. hope is the symbol of that which you long for, the description of that which you do not possess. for hope possesses the hopeful, like a sickness. a siren-song, it overcomes the light in their eyes, it overcomes the vitality of their life. hope saps them into inaction, to drift like derelicts amid the darkened skies, like so much dead wood, trapped in an inland lake. for those with hope, they are delivered only despair.

for those that receive what they wish, have no need for hope.

I used to believe this. I never hoped for anything, or perhaps I feigned that I did not. But I've learned that I lie to myself. I hope for a lot of things. I've found that often, I have nothing but hope. I can't decide if I still believe this, because if you have hope, then you do not have what you hope for, and if you have what you've hoped for, you no longer need hope. What is hope then? Some kind of emotional prosaic? A sort of mental rocking to and fro of the mind to give solace?

As Dante saw upon crossing the Acheron, the message at the entrance to Hell: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Of course this refers directly to Hell itself and not our mortal lives, at least as far as the story is concerned, but I can't help but wonder... Is hope ever a promise that is made good on? Is hope benign or benevolent? Is it something worth aspiring towards? Always hopeful for something? I presume those with hope, hope for something good, for others, or for themselves. I guess that people also hope for bad or evil things. I'm not really sure what the nature of hope is, after all this. It seems a circle that leads me back to the paragraph at the top of this blog.... a circular nonsense. I'm hungry, so I eat, I eat, so I'm not hungry. If you have food, you do not have hunger, how can you hunger, when your appetite is satiated?

It's only the starving that hunger so.

I find myself embracing hope now, as I had shunned it before. And I taste my own bitters words, knowing that I may indeed, have none.