Puck on... Hope

I hope I haven’t upset you.  I realize these things can seem a bit depressing.  Then again, reality often is. 

Well, there must be some hope.

I would expect you to say that.  But let’s be careful here.  Analyze that thought.  Is it born out of honest faith that hope springs eternal?  Or is it not out of fear?  The fear that it just might be true and all your fears and trials and tribulations might not be transitory.  That the valley will go on forever.  “Life sucks, then you die.”

I don’t believe that.

Of course not, it’s depressing.  Then again, listen to what’s coming out of your mouth.  Not “I know it can’t be”, or “it isn’t true”, but “I believe”.  You believe.  This is not an issue of the facts but of your own little ideas about how the world ought to be.  You don’t know.  You just believe.  You hope for hope’s sake.  Because to not would mean dealing with harsh realities.  And, don’t we both know, you just don’t have it in you.

You no doubt have some pithy prepared answer.  Go ahead.

That’s a rather dim view.

Of course it is; darkness has that quality.  The absence of light is quite dim.  And who’s to blame?  Me?  Oh, no, my boy.  It is you.  Actions have consequences; a lesson your species is hard pressed to learn.  You make your choices, you make your bed.  And now you must deal with it.  And how silly that you’ve seemed to have forgotten this.  That the very facts of your existence astonish you.  You’ve turned your back on the sun and are surprised to find a shadow.

And that does bring up a more interesting point.  Has it ever occurred to you that your hopes and dreams and desires fail so often not because of the particular things or places or situations themselves but because of something much more obvious?

What would that be?

You.  These things fail because you are involved.  The common factor in every human endeavor is humans.  You, flawed, tiny, dirty, clumsy, little creature that you are.  Everything you touch, everything you are spells doom.  You are doomed.

But you said before that the things we put our hope in fail because they are flawed.

Trying to hang me with my own words, are we?  Careful.  I’ve traded logic with the best of them.  Yes, the things you hope for are imperfect and undeserving of your hope.  And yet you persist in attaching your hope to them.  How could they help but break with what you’re doing to them.  You give them more weight than they can bear.  And don’t you see what that says about you?

Insanity.  As I said before.  Repeating the same mistakes, the same sins, again and again and again.  Never learning, never growing, always persisting, worse and worse and worse.  As you humans say: if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  But what to do when you are the problem?