On Hope and Despair

In my first post, On Language, for the sake of time I allowed myself to ignore the semantic difference between the words “object” and “symbol.” Here, though, I am forced to introduce the idea because much of the discussion revolves around the idea of “symbol” as the representation of a thing and “object” as the concrete thing in itself.

“What is frequently appreciated in many so-called symbols is exactly their vagueness, their openness, their fruitful ineffectiveness to express a ‘final’ meaning, so that with symbols and by symbols one indicates what is always beyond one’s reach.”[1]

For instance, a symbolic gesture does not attempt to get an immediate concrete effect much like a symbol may not even reflect a concrete object. But this is understood to mean that while they may themselves be abstractions, it is still likely that a symbol can be extrapolated to within the realm of concrete objects. In other words, a symbol can represent an abstract idea which, in turn, has attached itself to a very concrete object. An example of this could be Brick Tamland’s “I love lamp.” The very abstract symbol of his feeling of love is representative not of a vague abstraction but simply of the physical object of the lamp. Hence, the lamp can be seen, or at least interpreted, as the concrete symbol of his abstract love.

And here is where I can begin my discussion of hope. Hope is another fairly abstract feeling: one of expectation or desire. Hope is almost always seen as a positive part of the human psyche, just don’t tell Red.[2] Despair, on the other hand, is more of an ethereal concept, rather than a kind of “thing,” so to speak. I say this because despair, like darkness or cold, is defined not in and of itself but as simply the absence of something else, in this case, obviously, hope.

An internal discussion that I have been having for a few days now started with the question: Is it healthy to attach the entirety of one’s hope onto an abstraction or, in my specific case, an abstraction... of an abstraction bound to a physical, and wholly concrete, object? Meaning: hope through the lens of the potential, as the first abstraction, of a second abstraction, which I will not explain at this time, based on the object. And while the answer to this question may vary widely from person to person, with the eternal optimist arguing that one should always find hope in anything they can find and the pessimist arguing that all hope is inevitably futile, my own answer, based on my pseudo-positivistic outlook, would probably be no - it is not healthy.

However, if an incident occurs that causes the hope to be shattered, which it recently has, one cannot help but find themselves grasping at straws in order to not fall into an abyss of despair. In fighting this, probably inevitable, despair, I have taken a bit of solace in the fact that I was able to entangle myself in another, albeit very similar, question: is it better to have had that one glimmer of hope and lost it or to never have had hope at all?

I will ponder this question as I desperately search for something to fill the void or even, perhaps, somehow, someway, try to rekindle that hope I once had.

But, I suppose we will only truly know the answer to that question if I can somehow find myself sanding an old boat... on the beach... in Zihuatanejo.

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[1] Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 130.

[2] “Hope is a dangerous thing.” Ellis Boyd Redding