Not all blog posts need titles. If by some chance they get one, it does not matter really. It’s like a name. The name we are given could be nonsense, however the content within is what gives that name meaning.
On its own? Meaningless. Just as we are a bundle of experiences, blog posts are nothing but a bundle of thoughts in words and pictures.
What a cruel twist of nature that the more we feel a certain way, the more our brain hardens those pathways.
I awoke mid-sleep one day last week, in the early hours of the morning. Work was brutal that week, as I recall. All the assignments left undone before the holiday lay ready to pounce. I jotted something down on my notebook. I keep a notebook on my bedside table along with my book/ebook-reader, for reminders and thoughts that pop up. Most of what I write do not merit revisiting. This practice is simply a way of removing the thought from my mind and, in quite a literal sense, putting it aside. This thought has stuck with me for more than a few days now.
I had written: “One must first despair at the knowledge that there is no better place. Not in the person we are at the moment. Not in the place that we live in, or the station we occupy. Our place is predicated by millions of choices and fears. We can only then begin to live life mindfully, intentionally. “
There is no better place. That is a chilling thought. It is a radical rejection of hope. Hope bids us to wait; after so many losses a windfall must be right around the corner. Hope begs us to tolerate the intolerable; they may change on their own. Hope can even make us expect the impossible; someday I will get around to doing <this activity I desire>. Hope is comforting. It is like a chaperone. However, it does not act on its own. Hopelessness is terrifying. It is.
As it turns out, hope is equally so.
Hope is a balloon. Imagine a ledge, the jump down is a bit more than what we are comfortable with. Yet, the soil behind us is crumbling, pretty soon there won’t be a ledge. We have two options, either we jump to a new platform, or we die. There’s a balloon floating around. Our instinct is to grab the balloon. Grabbing the balloon gives us the feeling that we do not need to come down. And yet...the longer we hold on to the balloon, not only do we lose the footing we had, the jump becomes more difficult. Our arms get tired. We forget what it feels like to have solid ground underneath us. We begin to doubt our ability land (despite doing it so very often previously). Eventually, we become exhausted merely holding on to hope. We’ve beaten ourselves into a corner and now the platform below us feels infinitely removed.
We cling to hope because the alternative is so damning. Yet, the longer we placate ourselves without action, the harder the fall back to reality will be.
I was talking to a friend of mine about mine own realization of this a few days back.
I was diagnosed with a chronic illness at 14. It was a slap in the faces of both my parents and me. This is not what we had expected. Nothing would have prepared us for this. Our immediate reaction was disbelief. My parents held hope that there would be some magical solution that would cure this genetic malady. In the years following this, I went to every “traditional” doctor, charlatans, and alternative medications that could “potentially” cure me. I drank tea made out of crushed snail shells, bat wings, or some other promised mithridate. None of them, of course, cured me. (Alternative medicines that work are just called medicines.)
And yet, my hope for a cure did not end. I read through academic journals, medical journals, contacted the authors, and even tried to dig through the human genome. It was unlikely it would do anything, but I had hope. Maybe I would see something that the experts in their fields did not.
I even initially enrolled into college as in a related field. It didn’t stick- but that’s another story.
For a good 15 years, or so, I did not even appear disabled in my dreams. Despite the genetic condition ruining havoc in my eyes, kidneys, and ears. There was still hope. I did not dare talk about my conditions with others, I kept my friends and extended family at distance about anything relating to my chronic illness because talking about it would solidify it as real; and I still held hope.
All the while I suffered in solitude.
Despite being diagnosed with moderate-severe sensorineural hearing loss, my parents found it acceptable to forgo the purchase of hearing aids. They had hope that it would fix itself. Or hope that I would adapt myself.
Even when I found it impossible to succeed at school and caved in and bought a pair for myself I didn’t accept it. I hid it. I held hope that someday I wouldn’t need them anymore. I was still holding hope that I would one day not be disabled. I would never disclose my hearing aids. Which led to me being in swimming classes unable to hear any instructions (hearing aids weren’t waterproof back then).
I never requested accommodations. After all, I still held on hope that I was at best temporarily disabled.
Again, I struggled.
It was not until I leapt into the void I had been trying to avoid, that I truly understood the despair of hopelessness. There was no going back. There was no better version of me that would suddenly not be disabled. There wasn’t a version that wouldn’t have ADHD, depression, chronic illnesses, and the other aspects of life that I had hoped would change. Until then, these maladies lived an ambiguous life. No clear understanding of whether they were in my circle of control, or not. They had been so damning that I had avoided even looking at them. It was only then, after that radical acceptance, that I was able to extend empathy to myself.
To make intentional choices to help and protect myself.
To make intentional choices to help others.
To make intentional choices.
Afterthought: Hope isn’t a bad thing. Bad/good are just judgements, and they’re context dependent. What I wanted to convey here is that hope can be a salacious trap.
After-afterthought: The title is straight from Baldur's Gate 3, I started replaying it and this is a location from the game that has my favourite song. It is just phenomenal.