POSTS
Rutherford’s hope
By hisham
“Hope can make you lose sight, kid,†Rutherford said, “it can blind you from the truth, it can take your mettle and turn it into that which is worse than nothingness. You can falter and fall far quicker than you thought possible.†The frail, old man said those words as though he lived them, as though his being felt every nuance of hope’s danger during his eighty-odd years of living.
I couldn’t tell what had happened to make Rutherford utter such melancholic drivel. Perhaps a love long lost, or perhaps something that had to do with matters of a pecuniary nature. “Hope,†he told me once, “is one side of the same coin, that of expectation, the other being disappointment.â€
Rutherford had hope once, I thought. He had it and it let go of him. To the old man, hope could be perilous. It could take a man’s soul and raise it to the stars, only to let it fall back to earth.
Broken, shattered, Rutherford found a home not in hope, but in despair. He found a home in melancholic sputters of a nature befitting only a man ready to die, ready to let go of the world and all it had to offer.
The danger of hope lies not in hope itself, rather it lies in the person possessing it. If one plays party to the whims and fancies of today as if hope existed for the present moment instead of the future, then hope is merely deceit in sheep’s clothing.
Hope’s not about falling in love with fleeting moments, it’s not about finding comfort in daydreams. Hope’s about living true by seeking the right answers, by asking the right questions, by finding yourself as you look up at the stars and reach for their beauty, for their truth.