Hope

I consider myself a man of hope. Hope is powerful. Hope is crushing. Hope gives meaning even as life takes it away. I always hope for the best. For people. For myself. For my life. For love. For the lives and fortunes of others, no matter what the fates may weave.

Why do I say this?

I hear many times about how difficult life is. That it is too depressing. That we never get what we want. We fail and that there is nowhere to go now. The bitter void must sallow us up.

I read philosophy. I consider myself a philosopher. I read literature. I must say, there are few stories that survive history that do not deal with love, sex, deceit, failure, death and all the little nasty facts about life that in everyday living we try to forget. I read philosophy that centers on the impossibility of knowing being, that centers on nothingness itself. I have been hit by a bus minding my own business, walking across the street, and no one was there to stop that bus. No one saved me.

But what is all this to say? I still got up and ate breakfast. The man too depressed to live, the weight of the world upon his shoulders and some kind of real or imagined existential angst heavy in his mind, bent down to tie his shoes.
Sometimes you just have to let it go. Just live for a moment. Watch the sunrise. Notice how it changes each morning, how Monet for all his mastery could never capture this light. How it changes each morning each afternoon. Each moment precious and timeless. Take the time to notice someone. Just notice things. Life is filled with the wonderful the fantastic, but when embroiled in life and what it denies, you fail to see what is there.

I am not trying to give some stoic sense of the world here. I am not saying some kind of life philosophy. I am simply pointing out that someone we just have to ask what is happiness and should we listen to people whine about issues, issues that I agree are real and can be deadening (trust me I have been there), or do we have to let go for a moment and consider where we are. As one of my good friends said about some abstract political theory I was spouting, “Now explain that to the people in McClellanville.” I think on this line many times. Tell that to the people without a job, without a means to the next meals, without a family, or worse a family and loved ones who have abandoned them, to those without education or even the opportunity for one, or even the one who works their ass off only to fail and be turned away from the one thing that gives their life meaning. Stop and think then.

That being said—I will continue to read and think about Heidegger, because I believe it is important. I will continue to read literature. I will continue to love my family and friends, I will continue to harbor hope for my dreams both in my goals in life, in my love unrequited or not, and in the next day—but I will always hope. I will hope even if each moment I fail, and I will fail no doubt.
While I breathe, I hope.

Dum spiro spero.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8mr7Ex0cQ&feature=related