EVEN HATRED IS NOT AS CRUEL AS HOPE

Is hope really a good ally for life or is it the perdition of being?

Note: I wrote this blog entry after a night of reflection with my best friend, Don Ciro.

We always know what we want, we just don't decide for fear of change, of hurting others, hurting ourselves and because we get used to the environment, since we are animals of habits and routines. But we always know what we want, no matter how clouded our judgment is, in fact, this is one of the greatest ironies of life, we have the power of reasoning and yet we suppress absolutely everything or ignore that little man inside us that screams from reason and we decide not to listen to him, even though deep down we know that this is the right path; and all this happens because we have hope; therefore not even hatred is as cruel as hope.

The decisions we make in life will always have consequences, for some and for others, and although we'd like that sometimes those decisions don't affect others, only us, that doesn't happen, no matter how careful we're, there will always be a collateral damage, there will always be a contingency that we cannot foresee, prevent or what is unchangeable, it'll just happen, that is life, we're also affected by the decisions of others and we live in a constant in which basically life is a bunch of people trying to solve their problems, but although life seems to be a bit cruel at times, it also provides us with all the tools to see things beyond their nature, to analyze them and reach the points of reflection, which I consider to be the most important and that is where many people can fail, because they'll self-lacerate and blame themselves for the decisions they made. But we should never blame ourselves for that, everything in this life is given for a reason, it isn't a reason that has to do with a destiny in itself, but everything we do in our life, puts us in the place where we are, beyond the fact that this conspires for our destiny or not; It's happening because there is something inside of us that is pushing us and there is something outside of us that is also moving us towards that, towards that point, that is why I have never liked the phrase "everything happens for a reason", things happen because we make decisions and we must be responsible for our life.

In that order of ideas, we must advance, grow and evolve not only in material aspects, but also in many others, such as the spiritual, for example, which sometimes people dismiss easily, but having that inner peace, allows us to use that to our advantage and although it seems that the world isn't such a nice place to live, yes it is, it has its not so nice things obviously and is full of difficult moments that lead us to face crossroads and we do not know what to do; but here comes the greatest irony of life: we always know what to do, we always have the options, our hands are never tied because we are not slaves of life, we decide, we have that power, fortunately we were born in a world where our decision matters, at least for our life; we don't belong to anyone, no one owns us, but still, we'd like someone else to own us because that would relieve us too much of the burden of our life. We all have burdens, problems, sins to atone for and situations that make us suffer, marks from the past or from childhood, we all carry with us a myriad of negative things and sometimes we neglect ourselves to live life as it passes by. It's our decisions that put us in the places where we should be or that we consider that we deserve, because we decide so, not because there's a destiny or a higher calling, that energy that is transformed into power is flowing, we use it and canalize it to where we want, since finally we're “sentipensantes*" beings.

Yes, I will always say it, even hate isn't as cruel as hope, because with hate we have an inner strength (it's not positive), we know that we despise, we don't like a certain person or we experience a feeling of repulsion towards something, someone or a situation and we know that we could do anything to avoid it, destroy it and protect ourselves; at least hate gives us that opportunity, hope, on the contrary, doesn't. Hope is sweet and beautiful, but it's like the song of a siren, it's too late when we realize that we are really living with a monster called hope, its song is beautiful, but it kept us imprisoned there for a long time, hope keeps us thinking that there's a possible future, when our reason is always telling us the truth, acts are guiding us, and we're seeing everything clearly, but we cling to hope, this is the cruelest thing on earth, hate at least gives us a motive and makes us strong, in the end it consumes, however, it empowers and achieves goals, hope also gives us a motive, but every day it is tying our hands more and more until it breaks us and makes us its weak slaves.

I think that is why they always say that hope is the last thing to be lost (although we have misinterpreted it), because when there's nothing more to lose, the last thing that can be lost once that individual is extinguished or dies is hope. It is not the way it has been sold to us as that unattainable virtue of believing that things are possible, which I admire deep down, because I think that believing in that, in people and in the world, has something nice about it, but a lot of cruelty.

Sometimes, we're too afraid to ask ourselves, because we know that there're answers inside us that can hurt. It's important to be honest, because inside us there is a voice that is shouting loudly everything we have to do and how we should act, but we decide to ignore it to focus on what we supposedly "want" to do because we have hope and not on what we should be doing, because we know that what we should be doing will bring us certain consequences that don't please us and we prefer to stay there waiting for something better to happen or come to happen, when in reality we know that the changes in life are given by our decisions and not by a higher design of luck.

At the end of the day, one of the best things we can do is to ask ourselves, search ourselves and empty all the drawers of our mind, (introspection) surely it won't be a pleasant process in fact it's painful, because we end up discovering that the problem isn't in others but within ourselves, and this breaks with the paradigm that we create in which we're always the victims in our stories, and this happens because we never want to take responsibility for our actions and when we see ourselves from another angle and we have the opportunity to criticize ourselves constructively, we find that we aren't as victims as we have convinced ourselves and we're also victimizers and executioners. I think that is one of the great meanings of life, to learn to love oneself, to learn to consciously love the heaven and hell that dwell within us, as Oscar Wilde so well expressed it; It's a challenge because how can we love something that has a negative part of us, that is why it's important to know ourselves, and understand that bad inside of us simply exists, we're the ones who canalize that energy towards damage and destruction, to know ourselves, implies that what we see as bad we can take the best advantage of it and use it in our favor; that is why I think that there is no completely bad or good person, even in the most detestable of beings there is something of goodness.

It's right to feel bad about oneself, because one always expects everything to be reciprocal, but we must learn to get off the pedestal on which we ride and we must stop expecting recognition from others, this happens because it is usually something from the past that we haven't healed and we are trying to atone for it in the present, but until we find out what that is, we can hardly face the present, therefore, the past is important because it's giving us the lessons to face what we're today and what we will be at some point.

What we do have for sure is tomorrow because we're in the present, basically we're perceiving what we're at this moment and that is what we will always see, tomorrow is sure, but uncertain and we don't have to solve everything at once. This reminds me of a riddle: I have never been, but I'll always be, I have never been seen, and neither will I be seen, but everyone who lives will never doubt me; and that is tomorrow, beyond having certain death, we have tomorrow for sure, because we'll die in tomorrow, since, as long as we are conscious of the present we aren't dying. To conclude, we could say that life should be interpreted as Dante Alighieri's entrance to hell in the Divine Comedy, "abandon all hope if you enter here", I would add "for if you don't, you won't enjoy the present".

* We feel and think.