One of my favorite quotes from Franz Kafka that has stuck in my head for years:
Hope? Oh yes, there is hope — infinite hope. But not for us.
Haha. Kafka, you rascal. I haven't read anything by him in the last decade, but I like his bleak, skeptical, and ironical approach. I throw around that quote every now and again and it makes me think I am clever, intelligent, and modern--
Kafkaesque, you might say. But this morning I read a verse that left me feeling like someone pulled my pants down and hit me in the jaw.
And if you have not faith, hope, and charity, you can do nothing.
The earlier "look Ma no hands" fades pretty quickly. Kafka--like most of the intellectual hand-wringing I picked up in college--seems to be more useful as a check on a common-sense approach to life, rather than as a foundation itself.
I have often wondered where the balance is between naivete and cynicism, and the answer is always hope.
ReplyDeleteI remember you commented on the Ensign article a few months ago about Hope being the "misunderstood sister." I looked it up just now to refresh and found what to me encompasses hope:
"She is serene. Her eyes have the deep, knowing look of someone well acquainted with sorrow, the luminosity of recently being wet with tears. Hope has the confidence of one who clearly sees a bright future even when the next hours seem fog shrouded. Hope is steady and strong, a friend I am glad to have beside me during my own trials."
So a person doesn't have to be naive to be hopeful. In fact it is really the opposite. A person can be experienced and wise and still be earnest and hopeful; in fact I think these traits are inexorably linked, at least if happiness is going to be in the equation too. I find that to be a comforting feeling.
I think that a hopeful (and diplomatic) person can still hold his or her own in an intellectual hand-wringing discussion without being a wet blanket because dismissing hope is not in fact a triumph, as a cynic might argue, but instead its own form of naivete.
I agree. The last sentence was great. "I think that a hopeful (and diplomatic) person can still hold his or her own in an intellectual hand-wringing discussion without being a wet blanket because dismissing hope is not in fact a triumph, as a cynic might argue, but instead its own form of naivete."
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