Progeny of Taste (Emergence of Hope)

SENTENCED to twenty years jail in a foreign country. Imagine it. Little wonder there is nihilism of hope in the prisoner.

We can be prisoners anywhere. A life of taste is our way out every time.

The trouble is, however, we have the distinct capacity to invent a million or more individualised forms of fear, shaped it seems perfectly to the heart. But, this does mean we’re actually best placed to intelligently navigate our way through our myriad despairing ourselves. Yet, as a precursor we must forge our way slowly toward the process of understanding ourselves—onto maturity. It doesn’t come easily or quickly but it surely does come if we don’t give up on the exercise ultimately.

Progeny of a life of taste is hope. Taste is goodness; rich and good. Hope swells in such a rich seedbed. Nurturing a life of hope is hence necessarily about taste.

Hope is a strange thing. It’s latently placed. We need to invest largely to at last feel hopeful, and then this hope seems to last a while as we ‘ride it out.’ But, without re-investment our sense of hope again diminishes and we again become forlorn, eventually. It’s both soundly established yet chronically undermined.

A powerful lesson is this:

We don’t just hope for miraculous recoveries from our maladies. When we feel most hopeless we want a quick-fix because we’re in dire straits, desperate and confused; we’re spiritually alone. What took months to slide away will possibly take several weeks possibly to return. We need patience, most of all with ourselves. There’s really no issue here, for our individualised hope holds us in place for that better day, which is coming. This hope is a vision held in the forefront of the mind of that resplendent day ahead. This is a very personally “you” vision of anything both good and realistic, really.

We must all deal with hopelessness from time to time. Even the healthiest psychological specimen is not immune. Finding our way back is the key. Good taste is the best antecedent to living with emergent hope. The progeny of consistent taste is hope.

Hope like most things in life is a habit. The modus operandi of the hopeful is simple. They work hard to attain it and then they work equally hard to maintain it, never taking it too much for granted.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.