Dante in Devine Comedy, that epic poem about the afterlife, wrote “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” over entrance to hell. The loss of hope is a terrible thing. We have seen the agony of that twice in recent weeks, first in the disappearance of Malaysian FL 370 and again a few days ago in the tragic sinking of the Korean ferry en route to the resort island of Jeju.
In both cases, families and friends held on to the hope that their loved ones had survived. In the air crash hope lasted for weeks and even today, until the wreckage is found, some still believe there’s a chance that all may not be lost. With the ferry, the time frame has been much shorter, but still there may be some trapped in air pockets that can be rescued.
When a highly lethal cancer is diagnosed, in the aftershock most will cling to a shred of hope, however tenuous it may be. When wars are on the brink of erupting, as it now seems in the Ukraine and Russia, hope that it can be averted still is in the air.
Hope is an elusive emotion. It is a flimsy bit of flotsam floating in a restless sea in which we find ourselves We cling to it but once hope is lost, then the inevitable descent into the unknown begins to accelerate.
This time of year is a season of hope. After a disagreeable and prolonged winter, spring has arrived, albeit slowly. As life begins to stir around us we are heartened by it. The bluebirds have wintered over and laid their first eggs. Leaves are popping from trees that a few weeks ago looked totally dead. The rebirth of so many things gives rise to a hopeful feeling.
Some years ago seasonal affective disorder (SAD) was described. It is a feeling of sadness making its appearance at the same time each year, generally in the fall or winter. In times gone by it was called the winter blues, but SAD sounds much more scientific. I wonder it behavioral experts have looked into the physiology of Sad or if they have studied the mood elevation of spring.
There is no question that external events have a profound effect on hope. I suppose that’s why it seems somewhat attenuated this year. With the tragedies about which we hear so much, the natural disasters that suggest Mother Nature is not the benevolent goddess in which we want to believe but a dispassionate dispenser of malevolence, and the personal losses each of us experience when illness strikes, when recovery is slow, or the harbingers of death silently appear. All those and countless others can diminish our sense of hope and lead to despair.
There are endless aphorisms about hope: “hope springs eternal,” and “faith, hope, and love – these three abide,” come immediately to mind. One of my favorites is from a poem by Emily Dickinson. “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.”
When, at the end of the day, to which we will all come, it is a blessing when one has a belief that something lies become the grim depiction of Dante in his exploration of Purgatorio or hell. Another section of the same work is Paradiso, where heaven is encountered. Hope is present. As he expressed it, “In God’s will is our peace; it is the sea into which all currents and streams empty themselves for Eternity.”
Whether one is a believer in something beyond is vital. Christian and Jew, Muslim and Hindu, all express in one way or another, the concept of hope. Even in mythology when Pandora disobeyed Zeus and opened the magical box, all the evils it contained were released into the world. Only one thing remained in the bottom of the box—the spirit of hope.
Even in the darkest of times, holding onto hope will carry us home. To use spring time as a metaphor for hope may seem shallow to those lost in despair. If believing that beyond life lies a continuation the nature of which we cannot know, then hope does spring eternal.
Hayden Hollingsworth