LIKE A GARDEN LOOKED AT FROM A GATE

What is this nebulous thing we call "hope," and where do we find it?  Throughout history, many great writers and thinkers have chosen to view hope through the cold lens of logic.  Shakespeare suggested that hope exists only because "the miserable have no other medicine."  Nietzsche took it a step further, proclaiming that "hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments." 

I'm inclined, however, to side with those who see the positive side of hope, people like Norman Cousins who recognized that "hope is independent of the apparatus of logic."  Maybe Samuel Johnson came closest to expressing the truth when he observed that "hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords . . ."

So how do we find and keep hope?  Hints to the answer can be found in this poem by Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature: 

                                                        Hope

                                             by Czeslaw Milosz

                            Hope is with you when you believe

                            The earth is not a dream but living flesh,

                            That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,

                            That all things you have ever seen here

                            Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

                            You cannot enter.  But you're sure it's there.

                            Could we but look more clearly and wisely

                            We might discover somewhere in the garden

                            A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

                            Some people say we should not trust our eyes,

                            That there is nothing, just a seeming,

                            These are the ones who have no hope.

                            They think that the moment we turn away,

                            The world, behind our backs, ceases to exists,

                            As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

"WONDER KEPT DAZZLING ME . . ."

For many years, I have been inspired by the life and writings of the late William Sloane Coffin, who was a minister, a civil rights and peace activist, a prolific writer, and an unapologetic liberal.  In reading one of his books — specifically, The Heart is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality — I've come across a poem by Czeslaw Milosz which offers me both solace and hope as I attempt each day to process the onslaught of news about the wars and economic injustices that seem to be tearing the world apart.  Perhaps this poem will speak to others as well.  If we can continue to be dazzled by wonder, and "recall only wonder," it may be that we will have the collective energy and perspective to pull the world back from the precipice of self-destruction.

          Pure beauty, benediction: you are all I gathered
          From a life that was bitter and confused, 
          In which I learned about evil, my own and not my own.
          Wonder kept dazzling me, and I recall only wonder,
          The risings of the sun in boundless foliage,
          Flowers opening after the night, universe of grasses,
          A blue outline of the mountains and a shout of hosanna.
          How many times I thought: is this the truth of the Earth?
          How can laments and curses be turned into hymns?
          Why do I pretend to know so much?
          But the lips praised on their own, the feet on their own were
               running,
          The heart was beating strongly, and the tongue proclaimed
               adoration.


From Czeslaw Milosz, "A Mirrored Gallery," The Collected Poems: 1931-1987, trans. Renata Gorczymski (Ecco Press, 1988).