After an absence of five weeks, the return to the posting of my writing is marked by a change of tactic – The Delivery of Hope.
This is hardly a literary task, and yet why not? After all, writing is all I’ve got. In fact, I wrote the following the other day:
My art is writing, thinking, talking, listening. I’m not very good at these tasks, I know that, and it does not matter.
Why does it not matter? Should I not strive for excellence? Well, maybe…no. And here’s why.
But the key thing about hope — especially when we’re being deliberate about it — is that it’s only irrational to have hope if you don’t do anything different as a result of it. The ‘instrumental value of hope,’ as philosopher Michael Milona wrote recently is that it motivates us to work harder, be more clever, and generally do what it takes to try to overcome the odds.
If you’re optimistic that you’ll succeed, you’ll have less motivation to find an innovative way to do so. On the other hand, if you’re pretty sure your chances of succeeding are bad, but you hope to succeed anyway, you’ll keep your eyes open for opportunities that you might not notice otherwise.
[This is from a Forbes article written in May 2021 by Shane Snow, an author, CEO, and speaker.]
So, you see, my art does not really matter. What matters is that I hope – and plan, design, implement, act, in fact everything in my power to cause that hope to be fulfilled. This is where I need to be excellent, not in my art.
And the thinking immediately draws into view that mental construct called The Locus of Control. Locus of control is the extent to which you feel you have control over events that impact your life. In other words, putting stuff outside your personal locus of control is for optimists or idealists; real go-getters seek ever to enlarge the personal locus of control by hoping – and planning, acting, monitoring…etc.
It would be nonsensical to hope a non-League football club like Maidstone United could win the FA Cup in Great Britain. It’s way beyond your personal locus of control and potential impact; all you can do is be optimistic.
Can I be optimistic about my attitude to improving the social situation in South Africa? Weeell, I suppose so, but it won’t help much. What will help is hoping – and its corollary of doing something to achieve that hope.
In matter of fact, I have often been criticised for being (too) optimistic about the social situation in South Africa. And it turns out, rightly so! I was merely expecting an improvement in the situation – without putting in any effort to bring about that improvement. Hereon in – to the end of my days – I will HOPE. And do all I can to fulfil that hope.
If I had been more attentive to my beloved poets, I would have earlier realised my error. But I failed to peruse the poets carefully enough. For here is Alexander Pope in his poem titled An Essay on Man, written in 1734, hitting - according to my hypothesis here – a full bull’s eye.
An Essay on Man (Extract) by Alexander Pope
Hope humbly then; and with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Pope differentiates between the now and the then. Hope now, and soar. Death will come; till then adore your God. Who does not reveal future bliss, no, the hoping for that future bliss is your present blessing. Hope springs eternal; man never is blessed, rather he is always to be blessed. No optimism here lest it be false optimism. A stronger word – hope – presages future improvements, even unto the next life.
Hoping therefore, I picked up the next book to read. But no novel novel, no recently published Booker nomination, came to my hand. No, my main literary occupation whilst this revelation discussed above was occurring is to have read, in the following order:
Pride and Prejudice (a re-read) Jane Austen
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carre
East of Eden (a re-read) John Steinbeck
On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin
The Secret of Chimneys Agatha Christie
This magnificent list is cause on its own merit for pride and exaltation, happiness and joy, caused by the beautiful and inspirational content, all wondrously penned. Yet the catalyst to my thinking was another chemical compound, as necessary as these classics themselves.
Crucially, this catalytic compound was The Collected Poems by Stanley Kunitz. I say crucially for the following reason. As a prologue to his Collected Poems, Kunitz writes a short section titled Reflections. These are 14 statements perhaps of ‘experience alchemied into belief’. Here is one example:
Years ago I came to the realisation that the most poignant of all lyric tensions stems from the awareness that we are living and dying at once. To embrace such knowledge and yet to remain compassionate and whole – that is the consummation of the endeavour of art.
This two-sentenced epithet is so powerful it deserves its own classic tale – Living and Dying, say, or Life and Death, and perhaps these titles have been taken. Indeed, I have read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, but like many ideas, this book’s impact was not for that time of my life, and so it passed beyond me. But I try to learn – so Stanley Kunitz’s complete list of Reflections will be discussed here soon.
For now, the vital Reflection that hit me as a sledgehammer, caused many insights, Ah-ha moments, sheer pleasure was this:
I keep trying to improve my controls over language, so that I won’t have to tell lies. And I keep reading the masters because they infect me with human possibility.
How often have I lied – through using the wrong word, not exerting the correct control over my language? How often have I returned to the list of classic books as above because they infect me with human possibility? Over and above the chiselled starkness of Stanley’s language here (his control), I relish my surrender to the masters so that the difference between hope and optimism occurs to me, occurs as important to me, and occurs so that I can act, can do something about the future of my life.
I will reframe myself as a deliverer of hope. In my country, South Africa. And I will infect others do likewise.
Aieee!