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| T-shirt, "Out of the Darkness Walk," Dallas, Oct. 29, 2022 |
My wife asked me about my hopes for 2023, and I began to unspool the usual litany: a new book, get in better shape, fix up the house more. I don't know if those really count as "hopes" — "goals" might be more accurate. What's the difference? "Hope" seems more passive, scanning the sky, waiting for the arrival of something out of your control. While a "goal" is the mountaintop you set your sites on while climbing. Goals are better, more active.
Then again, I'm down on "hope" lately, set against it by an aphorism of all things.
I was going over an old post about hope — Hope is the thumb you suck waiting for things to get worse — and one saying, that seems to have slipped past in 2014, stung now: ""Hope makes a good breakfast but a poor dinner," offered by a reader, Tom, quoting Francis Bacon.
Aphorisms are dubious currency. Easy to spend — I sure fling them around — often overly familiar, worn smooth,or directly contradictory. If "Time is money" and "Love of money is the root of all evil," then is time the root of all evil? I sure hope not. (Although, on second thought...)
Aphorisms are dubious currency. Easy to spend — I sure fling them around — often overly familiar, worn smooth,or directly contradictory. If "Time is money" and "Love of money is the root of all evil," then is time the root of all evil? I sure hope not. (Although, on second thought...)
Aphorisms sound good. That doesn't make them actually valuable.
As frequently happens quoting such truisms, Tom got the wording slightly wrong. Bacon, a scholar, scientist, politician, contemporary of Shakespeare (who sometimes is credited with writing some of the Bard's plays) was famous for coining phrases. His death in 1621 did not stem his publications, and the second edition of his 1661 Resuscitatio contains numbered vignettes, "Apophthegms New and Old."
In No. 36, Bacon meets fishermen casting at a river and offers to buy their catch. They ask for 30 shillings; Bacon offers them 10. They refuse, so he settles down to watch them (the tale smacks more of a set-up for the line than reporting). After they catch nothing, Bacon chides them: "Are you not mad fellows now, that might have had an angel in your purse, to have made merry withal, and to have warmed you thoroughly, and now you must go home with nothing."
"Ay but," reply the fisherman, "we had hope then to make a better gain of it."
As frequently happens quoting such truisms, Tom got the wording slightly wrong. Bacon, a scholar, scientist, politician, contemporary of Shakespeare (who sometimes is credited with writing some of the Bard's plays) was famous for coining phrases. His death in 1621 did not stem his publications, and the second edition of his 1661 Resuscitatio contains numbered vignettes, "Apophthegms New and Old."
In No. 36, Bacon meets fishermen casting at a river and offers to buy their catch. They ask for 30 shillings; Bacon offers them 10. They refuse, so he settles down to watch them (the tale smacks more of a set-up for the line than reporting). After they catch nothing, Bacon chides them: "Are you not mad fellows now, that might have had an angel in your purse, to have made merry withal, and to have warmed you thoroughly, and now you must go home with nothing."
"Ay but," reply the fisherman, "we had hope then to make a better gain of it."
"Well, my masters," says Bacon. "Then I'll tell you, hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper."
Meaning that hope has value early in the day, but curdles as evening falls. Which every ambitious person has to keep in mind as the years slip past, and whatever you'd thought might have been, dances away, unachieved, forever out of reach, a will-o-the-wisp.
That's the problem with hope, its contains its own parasitic twin, disappointment. Hope is writing a check to yourself. Sometimes it get cashed. Usually it doesn't. After a while, the overdrafts pile up. Thus late-in-the-day hope takes on a delusional quality.
Meaning that hope has value early in the day, but curdles as evening falls. Which every ambitious person has to keep in mind as the years slip past, and whatever you'd thought might have been, dances away, unachieved, forever out of reach, a will-o-the-wisp.
That's the problem with hope, its contains its own parasitic twin, disappointment. Hope is writing a check to yourself. Sometimes it get cashed. Usually it doesn't. After a while, the overdrafts pile up. Thus late-in-the-day hope takes on a delusional quality.
What to do? Abandoning hope — for a certain level of success, say — sounds like surrender. It clashes with a favorite aphorism from Dr. Johnson, "I will be conquered; I will not capitulate." So the hell with Francis Bacon, throwing shade on the adored blankie that's carried by so many over the years. It may not be much, threadbare and tattered and stained. But it got us this far. No getting rid of it now.
IMO Hope is a thing outside circumstances and others satisfy for you, or dont. Goals are things you can affect on your own
ReplyDeleteAphorisms and famous last words have something in common: Did the persons who uttered them really say that? Did Oscar Wilde, on his death bed, actually say, "Either that wallpaper goes or I do"? Biographers, historians, and other writers often get it wrong, and just as often invent what they want the aphorism or last words to be. As Calvin Trillin pointed out, "quoting" the late John Foster Dulles: You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but you might as well give it your best shot."
ReplyDeleteI think it's better to be "hopeful" than it is to be "hopeless."
ReplyDeleteSurprised the concept of prayer wasn't a part of this column as the word is often paired with hope as in "Our hopes and prayers are with..."
ReplyDeleteCertainly praying and hoping do not always work. Maybe 50-50 as George Carlin said.
With that being said, and as an atheist, I feel prayer has its legitimacy. I see prayer, and to a lesser degree, hope as forms of positive thinking.
I do believe positive thinking and visualizing positive outcomes may subconsciously affect behaviors that may result in desired outcomes.
I would say that a goal is something that you can directly contribute to accomplishing, while hope is something that you do not directly control. You could have a goal of voting on election day, then hope that your candidate wins. Your three goals at the beginning of the article all require you to do something, just as Bacon's fishermen have to fish. Their goal depends on more than that, let's say luck, and that is where hope comes in. "I hope it doesn't rain today - because my goal is painting the house."
ReplyDeleteI just read THE BOOK OF HOPE by Jane Goodall, our bookclub selection for January.
ReplyDeleteQuote from Jane Goodall:
“Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times
The biblical definition of hope is much different than the current one. Especially in the old testament:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-hope.html
Pardon a nitpick, but the on-line references to Sir Francis Bacon that I'm finding state that he died in 1626, not 1621.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I'm being too literal, but I fail to see the point of his anecdote. He was unable to negotiate a deal of any kind with the fishermen, so they carried on with what they were going to do anyway. If he HAD worked out a deal with them for the fish, it would not have changed the outcome since they would have no fish to sell regardless.
Hopes, goals and aphorisms... you and I had a short exchange on a similar topic many years ago, following a column where you were wondering why people buy lottery tickets, to which I responded that what they were buying was the anticipation (or hope), regardless of the fact that they had a better chance of being struck by lightning.
I'm not much for aphorisms, though one has stuck with me recently as I try to deal with the piles of clutter around my own house: an elephant is best eaten one bite at a time. My goal is to reclaim the house I used to know, but to do so, I have to focus on smaller tasks until they're done, and not stand back to take a big overall look at how much remains. I prefer not to think about late-in-the-day hope, but work towards smaller goals. Those will add up all by themselves.