Hope

"Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal (Hope) are you straining?”

― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

 After a wonderful evening of dinner with friends, the interesting topic of Stoicism came up.

I am a huge proponent of the Stoic philosophy. I love everything about it; the focus on the present moment, the responsibility of self, and the examination of emotions through the use of logic and reason. How could anyone disagree with those positions?

To my surprise, a couple of friends thought the stoic philosophy wasn’t optimistic enough, and contained too much negativity…they said, “It didn’t leave much room for hope”. The word “hope” stuck with me for a second. It really made me think of how a Stoic would feel about this characterization of their belief system.    

To a Stoic, the past and future do not exist. There is only the present moment.

(Anyone who has ever read any of Eckhart Tolle’s teachings will notice how he was heavily influenced by the Stoic philosophy)

So according to the Stoics, attaching oneself to the past or by “hoping” for a better future devalues the present and prevents one from living life to its fullest. Stoicism then articulated what Freud would echo centuries later that… “He who remains a prisoner of the past will always be incapable of acting and enjoying."   The same applies to the person who is living for tomorrow, always waiting for their life to begin.

Hope, according to Stoic thought, is by nature an absence, a lack, a source of constant tension because we live our lives in terms of plans, hoping for some distant goal on which our happiness depends.

Webster’s Dictionary defines Hope…To cherish a desire with anticipation…to desire with expectation of obtainment…to expect with confidence.                                                                                                                                                        (I’ve highlighted these words to show the extreme expectations that are attached to the future desires of hopes)

You might ask, “What about goal setting?”

Goals are different…Hope in achieving a goal is a desire that has been clearly defined and is planned with action. Hope, in the way most people use it, is a wishful desire… a dream….lacking a clear direction. A future thought that depends on future contingencies that most times are not thought out and beyond our control.

Again…flawed expectations.

The Danger of Unrealistic Hopes and Goals:

Goals have their issues too. If one reaches their goal, they may experience a puzzling sense of disillusionment and immediately our desires force us into “hoping” for the next distant goal.               

"We wait for life as life passes" is the famous phrase by the Stoic philosopher Seneca. The good life then, is a life stripped of both hopes and fears. Hoping for happiness is to "seek it where it is not and neglect to seek it where is it" -Epictetus.

I’m also an avid reader of Buddhism. I was surprised to discover this Stoic philosophy was also echoed in the Buddhist teachings.

“You must learn to live as if this present moment was the most vital of your life. For nothing else exists in truth: the past is no longer and the future is not yet".

Even Nietzsche weighed in against hope… “We 'shoulder' like 'beasts of burden' because of our inability to love reality for itself.”

Our reality is our reality…and sometimes that may be depressing (that’s a personal perspective); however, the unrealistic, unexamined expectations of future hopes are destructive patterns of thoughts that permeate into other areas of our lives as well.

French philosophy Andre Comte-Sponville points out that "to hope is to desire without consummation, without knowledge, without power".

To desire without consummation because by definition we do not have what we hope for… to desire without knowledge because if we knew how to obtain the object of our desires, then we would do so… desire without power because, again, if we had the power to obtain our desires, we would do so.     Hope then according to Andre leads to frustration and impotence.

Hope highlights an important difference between Christianity and Stoicism… 

Christianity teaches the world is not as it should be and that we live in a cursed and fallen world…we are sinners, unworthy, and decrepit. We therefore “hope” for the grace of God and for the Kingdom of God and for our own salvation.

(*note...I do not believe this is the message of Jesus)

Stoicism, on the other hand, aims to understand and appreciate the world we live in and accept our place within it. Good or bad, we have an opportunity to experience.

“Life is happening for us…not to us. Every moment is a chance to learn…a chance to understand”

Christianity teaches dissatisfaction and despair can only be defeated by hope. Stoicism teaches despair is caused by making faulty judgments on the world, that hope is at best worthless.

Stoicism is a practice of reason, logic, and living in the present moment. It’s about realistic expectations and facing the ugly realities of life (Lies, stealing, cheating, deceptions, depressions, anxiety, and death) that are out of our control.                   

However, by accepting the cold hard realities of our condition, Stoicism allows us to appreciate the beautiful opportunities that await those who willfully acknowledge the ebbs and flows of life knowing that it’s all going to be ok.

                                         “No man is free unless he is master of himself”

                                                                                         -Epictetus