Friday, July 9, 2010

The Illusion of Hope

Part of the trauma recovery process involves renegotiating the decision-making and decision-acting processes. Re-establishing confidence in navigating outcomes, both short-run and long-run, as well as positive, negative and neutral is also imperative during recovery.

Somehow, those embers of hope, called beat and breath, stay alive in us, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Our existence is not a permanent condition, and never has been. These embers of hope are an illusion that always has a fitting end with our death.

The cycle of hope is so alluring, so moving as it ebbs and flows through our day. It is hope that is the cause for despair. Hope is what keeps us stuck in this idea of some superior self that somehow always lives to fight another day, until there are no more days to live. This is much like the heroic character in a video game, able to find new life, again and again. We're unnplugging the damned box.

The idea of a self or a soul, that somehow we are whole on our own, is the great concern. Not looking at life as a whole, then, is a worthy goal. Our life is a product of all that has come before and all that will come after us. It's momentary by nature, unmoving by consciousness.

This is not a doom and gloom approach to life. Actually, if we did not have the capacity to change and expire, what in this world would move us in any direction but our self and our own demise and to hell with everyone and everything?

Thankfully, we are not forever. Thankfully, we are able to see the false ideal that hope offers. Thankfully, we can do something different today.

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