Friday, June 20, 2014

young warm hopes

On p. 170 of the Fagles translation of the Odyssey, they talk about Nausicaa, "...young warm hopes..."

One of my favorite books is about pleasure in ancient Greece. Fish were not taxed by the local priests, and thus very popular.

What young warm hopes have I given up at my age? I used to love looking out the window, but now find my desire for the outdoors has diminished. I used to want to do something big in the world, but now I see how puny we are. I think about that Langston Hughes poem, about dreams deferred. I used to think a spiritual community would behave better than regular people. Now I know we can't stop being human with all the mess. I used to believe in justice, but justice is something you have to fight for because it's not the natural default, and fighting doesn't win the day.

Disillusionment is good; Seeing the world clearly is a good thing. But we still need hopes. In Learned Optimism, we need optimism because we get more done. The down side of optimism is that you squander resources. A pessimist is more likely to allocate resources in the best way. So we need to wear both of those hats. Like they say in The Meaning Of Life, that people need to wear more hats. That's my hope--to gracefully wear more hats.

Little phrases are interesting. Nausicaa's handmaidens have "lovely braids". The sea nymph who saves Odysseus has "slender ankles". The qualifiers before names, subtle Odysseus.

No comments:

Post a Comment