Josh Mitteldorf, "The Paradox of Hope"

"The Paradox of Hope"

by Josh Mitteldorf

"I live in hopeful anticipation of the next thing. I’ve made a virtue of enduring work, exercise, meditation, and patient listening, and stroke myself to reward perseverance. But I find that even when I’m doing something for fun, frequently I’m consoling myself all the while with a promise of whatever comes next. Hope keeps me upbeat and optimistic. This is a lifelong aspect of my temperament, as well as a cultured habit of the mind. I promise myself that I am working toward something better, a reward in the next hour, something transcendental in coming years. It gets me out of bed in the morning and compensates me for the looming specter of my mortality.

I slip from hope into waiting. The present is never satisfactory. I am living for something else. As the years go by, I begin to suspect that ‘something else’ is an illusion. And yet, it is the hope itself that infuses meaning in each moment, gives structure to my activity, a sense of solidity and purpose that lifts me from the void.

Hope, like purpose, is an illusion, in the sense that there really is not something better just around the corner. The paradox is that the illusion makes the present more tolerable, more interesting, perhaps even fun. Just as ‘playing to win’ is more engaging than just ‘playing around’, purposeful activity works for me, even if I know underneath that the purpose is insubstantial. The paradox remains unresolved. I don’t know how to reconcile my enjoyment of purpose with my cognizance that, ultimately, there is no purpose.

Children spend a good deal of their lives in boring classrooms, or waiting to do what they want until it fits into an adult’s schedule. Perhaps it was in elementary classrooms that I first learned to postpone joy. But in the present, I have to think that the habit of consoling myself with expectation of the future is not the way I want to live.

How to change? The first step is awareness of the pattern. Perhaps this alone would be sufficient to induce change eventually, but I hope to speed the process along with the mantra, ‘This is as good as it gets,’ repeated whenever I notice that I’m consoling myself with anticipation. If all goes well, then pretty soon, I won’t be living in the future any more."

- http://daily-inspiration.org/