The Journey

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 on a life to come.

~Alexander Pope from An Essay On Man, Epistle 1, 1733

This quote has languished at the head of an otherwise-empty, drafted blog post for more than 9 years. I revisited it countless times. I knew I had something to explore here, but each time I returned, I ended up quietly walking away again.

My earliest remaining post on this blog is entitled Happiness and the Loss of Hope. It is arguably the most-read post on this site from these past ten years. There is something profoundly simple, and yet frustratingly complex, about the connection between hope, happiness, expectation, disappointment, loss and contentment.

We don’t often associate hope with discontent, as I did in that original post, but this haunting quote by Alexander Pope encapsulates that symbiosis perfectly. In the forever-chasing of that carrot presented by hope, we remain perpetually discontented, for any time we reach a carrot, a new hope/desire/carrot appears on the horizon, beyond our present reach. And so it goes, on and on forever, until or unless we consciously jab a two-by-four into the spokes of that churning wheel.

Pope’s quote reduces this inevitability to simply being the “human condition.” I believe he is right. But does that mean that we have no control over it? Does that mean that we are destined to be eternal victims to this state of consciousness?

If metaphysics has taught us anything, it is that when you introduce an observer to the experiment, it changes the experiment, and thereby, the outcome. Awareness changes everything. Awareness is power.

So what happens when we turn our awareness to the hopes that are springing eternally from our human breast and relentlessly driving our discontent?

I have long taken the stance that expectation is the heart of disappointment. This concept is not so different from hope robbing us of happiness, but I am fully aware of how controversial these ideas may seem at first pass. I understand that they disrupt the status quo. I am aware that they invite unwelcome feelings and may very easily be misperceived as pessimism or outright depression.

I assure you, that is not my point.

The truth is that ceasing our endless hoping, and releasing our continual expectations, even for a moment, can bring enormous relief. After all, without expectation, there would be no disappointment, which is the inevitable result of an unmet expectation. But because we are usually so preoccupied with the busyness of doing and achieving and seeking and chasing and numbing and striving and competing and so on and so forth…the stillness of stopping and being can seem overwhelming (at best) or terrifying (at worst). If only we would allow ourselves the briefest courage and faith to sit in that empty space, we would be rewarded with the incomparable relief that accompanies it. I realize this is a tall order.

December has ushered in quiet and stillness and space, for me. I do not know how long it will last, so I am choosing to cherish it. After months (a year?) of intensity, upheaval, unknowns, drama, pain, striving, trying, letting go and contending…I find stillness. I find quiet. It is deafening, like the mind-numbing, ear splitting silence that rises from a world buried under thick waves of snow.

I finally found a safe space in which to begin my journey back into the depths of darkness, to begin the work of unpacking what lies there, to propel my path forward into the light. The well of grief that lies gaping at the entry point of this process appears bottomless. Inexplicably, there is a faith in my heart that supersedes hope and gives me the courage to proceed, knowing that there is something beautiful rising out of that inky well even though I can’t see it yet. I’ve just begun my journey in these past weeks, and the stillness and the space and the silence have opened up around me like a container for whatever spills out.

I had a choice. Turn my awareness toward the stillness and the space and the silence and allow them to prevail OR fill them again with the busyness and the doing and the hoping and the planning….

I heard a beautiful quote this weekend by Glennon Doyle in which she explains that, in order to rise from the flames, we must first sink, sink, sink down into the ashes. It is only from the sinking that we can return again to rising. I felt that downward pull within me, and upon hearing that, I conceded to the pull. I let go of all the hopes. I relinquished my expectations. I allowed the sinking to commence. I jammed a two-by-four into the spokes of that spinning wheel, and in so doing, I felt relief.

This weekend, my ears rang from the silence. It was ever present and overwhelming. Whether I was alone at home, in the park or at the store, the silence rang in my ears above all else. The stillness drew me into a fatigue I could not overcome. The space within me became vast. The grief spilled out and this container caught it.

Does this sound bleak? I understand, if so. But it was nothing more than the initial, uncomfortable trappings of adjusting to contentment, peace and being…even if only for a moment in time. The ringing in my ears is but the shockwaves of contentment filling the body of space where the constant striving has been. The intense fatigue is the deep relaxation of a human who stopped running to reach the next carrot in order to revel in the victory of having finally arrived at this safe and abundant place. The space that surrounded me was the palpable presence of a loving, divine essence offering me comfort, home and peace after so much weariness. This space assures me that the grief will not overwhelm me, rather it will be the catalyst for the next rising.

Like all things, this is a season and seasons will change. But for right now, I am enjoying the rest and the contentment of just being. It is a space free of conflict, devoid of drama, empty of plans and absent of any competition. It is vast. It is unexpectedly pleasant. And it leaves the future completely and utterly open for any possibility to emerge, unfettered by hopes and expectations. I need not wait for the next blessings to arrive. They are already here.