Physical and cognitive decline, infirmity and death – that's on the menu for everyone. And despite this, we can be happy. Why? What is it that ultimately gives us hope? What is it that stops us from sliding into existential despair?
Unlike every other life form on our planet, we have the ability to imagine the future. On the basis of observation, we can extrapolate how the cycle of life looks and how it will look. We can picture, even on a glorious spring day such as today – bright sunshine, brilliant blue sky, 22°C outside as I write, trees starting to unfurl new leaves – that by late November, it will be grim; sleet, leaden skies, temperature just above freezing, long dark nights. But then come next April, we'll once again see days such as today.
It's always worth noting the Rabbinical saying: if you're having a bad day today, remember there will be better ones; and if you're enjoying a good day, remember there will be bad ones. Yet seasons, and days good and bad, are cyclical; something to be toggled through. Biological life, however, is binary – it's either on or off. Alive or dead.
Positive expectations have a positive role in medicine. Belief in the power of hope helps healing outcomes; clinical studies have shown that all other factors being equal, patients who hope to recover are more likely to do so than patients mired in hopelessness. Mind over matter, belief in the power of belief – the placebo effect is powerful; while science has yet to explain how it works, it is real, and it can produce measurable physiological changes.
Hope generates fortitude, the power to carry on in the face of adversity. I could see that in my father in his last years. Accepting his situation, yet striving to get on with it, until the very end.
But what about consciousness? Is its existence also binary? Will it be snuffed out with death? And here we have experience hope in its most profound form. Dismiss the notion of survival of consciousness as a false hope, and it no longer works its spell. It's hope that keeps us keeping on, in the expectation that the soul – in one way or another – survives body death. But is it just hope – or will hope morph into knowing? Into gnosis? Personally, I feel it. In small but regular experiences (I had one today on my walk) which suggest to me that this is true.
Materialism, ultimately, denies us the greatest hope – that of being part of an eternal whole, being upon a journey of spiritual evolution, along with the Universe as it unfolds.
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Divine Inspiration
I always feel I’m on the back foot, hence agnostic, wary or downright cynical, when words like mind, soul or consciousness are used because someone always corrects my understanding of them, but playing along with the themes you explore in this post … I think that hope, in the earthly sense I understand it, dies when we’ve reached a point known as the coming of age. To me this means the point where you realise that you’ve seen it all, and however new something is, you’ve already experienced it one way or another. Now, the trick is we never know it when it happens. I realised it about 20 years after I believe it happened in my life, and only by small degrees. I did have epiphanies before, when and soon after it happened, though. However, it’s this realisation, late as it is, that still anchors me in this life. In other words, not entertaining false hopes is kind of liberating, like happiness, and consistent with my idea of managing expectations vis a vis reality. World-weary? Two other refinements are self-sufficiency and a chance to understand something in your life at a truly deep level. I’m rapidly losing the former, but I am glad that there was a time in my life, sometime in the past perhaps, when I felt I understood something – a language I was not raised to speak. It’s very modest, I know, but, for me, it counts. After the coming of age, we are dead to the world but still drawing breath. I see this in all our endeavours. We talked about architecture – the age of the tall buildings was when it coincided with optimism in the age of machine (20s and 30s). All tall buildings after that time are derivative and lifeless. Visual arts – impressionism! No longer photographic accuracy and not yet incomprehension. Why are impressionist art galleries in world class art museums heaving with people while pre- and post-modern ones echo with solitary footsteps? People have a kind of sixth sense about this art. Car design – the 70s, in my view. Music – again the 20s and 30s, in my view. Marriage – only when young, because you’re too cynical after that. After the coming of age, all that’s left is contemplating the time before it or contemplating a new age of discovery which you hope will come with the life thereafter.
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