Hope needs a stronger sense of direction
The rise of cynicism is something I feel strongly within myself, percolating at a faster and faster boil these days. It’s something which somewhere deeply I deeply resent. In part because I’m one-part an ever-hopeful guy. But I’m also one-part the ever-aging realist, whose eyes are too wide open even when I nap. And what I see constantly disturbs the equilibrium of my hope.
Large scale class warfare has broken out, yet most of us don’t realize it. The effects of it occur in unexpected simmers. Rudeness, for example. Whether in shopping lines or traffic, rude psychological skirmishes happen everywhere. Gated communities have become gated minds and hearts.
Middle class standards of living and real income are constantly documented as eroding. Generations of children are living longer and longer with their parents. Of course, we can certainly point to cultures where extended families share living quarters. But we can also point to those same cultures, that in some cases force employees to sleep on cots at work, lest they be accused of not working hard enough.
These confluences include a rising standard for some and a lower standard for others; a desperate belief in a better life ahead by some and a despair that the best is behind us by others; and a zeal for living an active and fulfilled life on Facebook, while existing with growing exhaustion and isolation by many, many others. Existing.
When we talk or write about hope, well, hope is something occasionally tolerated, but generally ignored unless we are in a juiced-up election cycle, or some big national or international trauma has taken place. Typically, we’re either too tired or too competitive for grand speeches. And hope is something to debate. For if we agree that we need to build on hope, we must first have conferences and studies and committees to tell us not only what hope is, but what it embodies. There are rules, after all.
We have lost our collective and individual abilities to discern. We have lost our way. It’s too easy for us to be charmed and seduced by the latest TV series or by edicts that we need to ‘work hard.’
For some, each day is a labor of the love of spending. For others, each day is a labor enveloped in growing despair. My take? The individual’s inner creative discernment has been successfully eroded. We are flotsam of mass and collective reactions, too quick to turn on each other and too slow to reach deeper within ourselves for better answers, deeper hope.
Hope needs more than hope. Hope needs a sense of direction. A sense of direction that is strong enough and vivid enough to overcome the momentum of despair and cynicism.
