I just read the question about the election and hope. Wow. That is about the best thing I have read in a long time. I wish I’d had those words these long years of exile from my country (I’m an American living abroad because my partner is British, not because of Bush). Thanks for such inspiring words.
J.E. Knowles
And thank you right back, because I read the post again in order to talk to you now, and it turns out that I need to be reminded right now about hope. Not so much in terms of the government — I’m afraid that I have, at least for now, lost my energy to engage with the soul-numbing horror and stupidity that churns out of the Bush administration on a daily basis — but on a more personal level.
Hope is a concept that occasionally turns my head inside out. It’s a huge, huge part of who I am. And (or But) sometimes it’s challenged pretty radically. There’s a book I read a while back that I go back to fairly often because it smacks down a lot of my ideas about hope, but (or and) I think it’s at least partly right. It’s called The Last Word On Power, by Tracy Goss, and it’s ostensibly a business book, except that’s not why I keep reading it. What I come back to again and again is that Goss urges the reader
to accept — as if accepting a gift — these statements:
Life does not turn out the way it “should.”
Nor does life turn out the way it “shouldn’t.”
Life turns out the way it does.
When I say “life,” I mean your life: the life of the person reading this book. And by “the way it should,” I mean the way you most deeply hope life will turn out, the way you have always expected it ought to turn out in order to be meaningful.
— from The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss
And then she goes on to suggest that going through ‘the eye of the needle of hopelessness’ is a necessary step — and that we can meet this hopelessness with acceptance or resignation. And that acceptance leads to the freedom to take any stand, any action, to attempt whatever you think is good and fail spectacularly regardless of the consequences, if that’s what happens. She says, “Acceptance gives you the opportunity, instead of giving up, to play with full engagement, free from the fear about how things will turn out.”
The first time I read this book, this made me so mad that I actually threw the book across the room. But after many re-readings, I understand what she means, and I don’t disagree. I’m just not sure I am brave enough to believe that I can accept ‘hopelessness’ without feeling hopeless. Because feeling hopeless and bitter and twisted (the resignation she talks about) is not the point. The point is to feel free of fear, and to therefore be bold, to take chances, to make outrageous choices, to be as much of oneself as one wishes to be.
In other words, to be what I’ve always hoped I could be. Except without the hope.
This makes my head hurt, and scares the bejesus out of me because I think she might be right, and where does that leave all my hope stuff? And yet, of course, on some level Solitaire is about this journey through the eye of hopelessness, even though I had not read the Goss book before I wrote the novel.
I certainly haven’t been able to let go of either hope or fear in my life. And the question I wrestle with is, are hope and fear two sides of the same coin? Is it necessary to lose hope in order to conquer fear? This one’s more than a pint, it’s a pitcher. I’d be interested to hear what folks have to say.
And finally, I’m not sure how all this is related, but here is a quote I currently love. It’s the epigraph to The Teachings Of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda.
Para mi solo recorrer los caminos que tienen corazon, cualquier camino que tenga corazon. Por ahi yo recorro, y la unica prueba que vale es atravesar todo su largo. Y por ahi yo recorro mirando, mirando, sin aliento.
— from The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda
For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.