Continuous problem-solving and optimisation, and fulfilling wishes and needs until they re-emerge (or new ones appear) creates a feeling of a perpetual present; a feeling of time rushing forward as the contents of time past seem to merge into a homogeneous mass of sameness with slight variations and few spikes of exceptional things taking place (in some cases only punctuated by consumption: the purchase of something new -the alchemic transformation of money into a finished object to which we only relate through acquisition and utilisation- that would illusorily break this repetition)
In the day-to-day of the perpetual present there is no perceivable change. Except for a vague gradual advancement of the chain of causality, of cause and consequence, that somehow makes today different in some sense than 5 years ago. However, that change is dissatisfactory; we are powerless confronted to this chain of causality, where our role belongs to the daily satisfaction of needs, as they go and then emerge once again.
Many of these needs and wishes soon resurface as the cycle shortens. The spiritual need is totalised into the summoning of neurotransmitters: the results (or dare we say “impacts”) of fulfilling a need become secondary to obtaining our due of momentary serotonin-powered peace. The results are acceptable as long as they do not disrupt the security that we have pieced together for ourselves, our homely status quo ensuring decent survival. And this cycle of surfacing and fulfilment continues, making hopeful and hard work towards something meaningful but risky seemingly impossible; we perceive ourselves as weak, we lose faith in our agency.
We want to be kind to ourselves and solve problems just to get a bit more of that peace and security. We ignore the angst-inducing (an angst we prefer to suppress and not bring up) inner void, a subtle spiritual hunger that we stopped even trying to fulfil. We prefer this hazy neurotransmitter powered peace so that we can be functional enough to fulfil our responsibilities to society. Without change and an act of intrinsic personal (or group, or communal) agency and meaning, the present is a cyclic eternity.
But we humans, it is in our nature that we fall in love with forms. We cannot explain it, transcending any idea of utility, profit or rational justifiability. We might call this our hopeful star, that we see when we are faced with infinity, when the inner chatter that we impose into our minds ceases (our masks fall off sometimes: we read a passage in a book, we shiver at a scene in a film, a musical piece, a beautiful house or a garden, at the sudden surge of “useless” empathy we feel for a fellow stranger, at witnessing an act of excellence or heroism).
Everyone chases or has toyed with the idea of chasing these forms, because it is in our nature. They express some strange loyalty and unconditional cherishing that we deeply feel in our core: like a gravitational force, or an unfailing tugging at our sleeves, reminding us that it is there and will always be there no matter how much we shove it aside as “childish” or “unrealistic”, no matter the complexity and meticulous coherence of the scaffolds of social appropriateness we have built around our identities.
They are forms because words cannot express them. Words are conventions; they are built upon mutual understandings of experiences because they are made to communicate between people. But that source of hope1 and yearning that we all carry is individual to us, only we can know it to the core, as we see it expressed in different forms in the world (a metaphor, a genre, a lifestyle, a particular scene of life, a type of clothing, a type of object or activity).
In the end, the only word that could really explain this yearning is your name, “you”. And only a friend, someone with whom you formed a true spiritual bond, will know what “you” means, otherwise there are no combinations of words that will do it justice.
Words cannot express it, but we yearn to give these forms more space in the world, creating that change that disrupts the eternal present while it brings us closer to these forms, to understanding them and thus understanding ourselves better.
I suspect that in this path towards becoming a hopeful being, chasing and creating these forms that transcend the eternal present fills that void. We disrupt an eternal present because we believe full with hope that there lies something better beyond it, where we live by these forms. We cultivate, create, share them, and inspire them in others, so that this witnessing can also bring some of this hope in others: that trying to understand what moves us and gives us life is a worthwhile pursuit, even if we cannot quite explain why it moves us to others.
- Credit to Byung-Chul Han in his books The Spirit of Hope for providing an explanation of Hope the most truthful I have come across so far. ↩︎
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