Hope is a two-edged sword. To hope is to dream – to aspire to something we do not yet have. The thought of some day having what we lack inspires us in the present. We may not yet be complete, but some day...the very idea that there may be a “some day” makes the present bearable, perhaps even fulfilling. It is this thought that spurs us on to greatness, to otherness, to something beyond what we once were. Hope is the fire of life.
Yet, paradoxically, there are sometimes things we want so much that we dare not hope. For, just as hope is the animator of our present pursuits, it is equally the confirmation of a desire for something that may not, in the end, come true. And if those dreams do not exist, how can they be crushed? The bigger the dream, the bigger the risk. It is one thing to wish for the Browns to win the Super Bowl – if that desire does not come true (it is worth noting that this particular dream seems extremely unlikely to come true any time in the near future), one will be disappointed but not devastated. It is quite another thing to wish for the adoration of someone you love, or admission to your dream school, or to be hired into the job your heart desires.
In such cases, the safest reaction is to deny the dream itself – either deny its possibility outright or deny that you badly want it to come true. On first glance, this seems to be a reasonable approach. If the dream fails, you will not be (very) disheartened, and if it succeeds you can celebrate anyway. But I think there is more to it than this. More than the possibility of great disappointment is lost when one declines to hope. One loses a little of the color of life itself along the way. If I decline to hope I am protected against the devastation of failure, but it seems to me life is a little less meaningful even if my dream is, in the end, fulfilled. In refusing to hope, I have deliberately dulled my senses. I have chosen a tepid rather than a dynamic existence. I have picked the safety of the familiar in lieu of the adventure of the unknown. In doing so, I have deprived myself of a chance to experience life in its rawest, most unfiltered reality, and have instead chosen to while away my finite hours in a state of dreary familiarity, of comfortable mediocrity, of a numb safety that is, in its way, far worse than the pain of dashed dreams. Even if the dream comes true, it means less because I have convinced myself I didn't want it that much anyway.
What could be worse than the watered-down life of mundane safety, no risks taken yet no true joys or sorrows experienced either? At least when you hurt you know you're alive. As for me, I will always choose the life of suffering and jubilation, of trials and victories, of failure and success, over the painless yet joyless life of no risk.
It is no coincidence that these thoughts fill my head at this hour, nor that I must convince myself of the desirability of hope even if it exposes me to possible disappointment. Since my last blog entry – nigh on four months ago, how the time flies! – I have put a great deal of energy and effort into realizing my long-standing dream of travels. In those four months I have gone through the countless steps of applying, interviewing for and accepting a position as an English teacher in South Korea. At every step along the way I have faced the very real possibility of rejection or failure, and it would be a lie to say I have always held out hope. For me, it is not an easy time to brave the dangers of hope. Coming off the heels of a failed marriage, a financial aid disaster and a return to the town that in a way has symbolized all my past failures, my mind has come to guard against hope. I often find myself involuntarily seeking shelter along the safer path of denial. Yet, it has never once made me happier.Tonight I sit with the final hurdle – this time it really, truly is the last one – in sight. All that is left is for my visa paperwork to be processed by the Korean Consulate in Chicago and for them to return my passport unaltered save the addition of a big, shiny, beautiful, incredible, unearthly visa stamp on an otherwise unremarkable page. Rest assured, I have experienced no shortage of anxiety since mailing the forms to the Consulate. Examples include:
Being convinced I somehow failed to send all necessary documents even though I checked this at least half a dozen times before filing,
Worrying that I sent the package to the incorrect address, dooming my passport, contract and other precious documents to an inescapable labyrinth of Lost Mail, even though I also checked this half a dozen times,
Fretting that somehow the Consulate would find fault with my mailing method and, instead of contacting me to remedy the situation, simply hoard the documents as punishment for my ineptitude, and
Various other wild and unreasonable scenarios all ending in me not being able to go to Korea.
Objectively speaking, it is perfectly possible I could have erred on at least one front in this whole visa process, and therefore it is possible I could be denied a visa or lose my passport or have some other accident occur to ultimately keep me from Korea. However, I must remember in this time of momentous apprehension that watering down my hopes may safeguard me from hurt, but it also numbs me to life in the meantime and even afterward.
And so I choose to hope, and write of my hope, and say that I am terribly excited to be finally pursuing my dreams of travel, and bugger the risk of failure. Bugger safety and bugger caution. I've put all my eggs in this basket and if it spills, well, at least putting it all together again will be a task interesting enough to keep me occupied. If it's pain I end up feeling, at least I'll bloody well feel something and not just exist in some kind of purgatory resembling nothing more than living death.
[Insert some sort of transition here, because I'll be damned if I can think of a good segue and I'll not stay awake all night conjuring one up]
I'm going to blog in the couple weeks before I leave (flying to Minnesota February 9th and flying to Seoul, South Korea February 16th, for those who care to keep a running itinerary) and perhaps even add a few pictures (scandalous, I know) since I'll be trotting up to Ann Arbor in the meantime and will be able to retrieve my camera. After that I'll either continue the blog with my adventures in Korea or start a new one expressly for that purpose. Until then, thank you for following along and for sharing my hopes, as I know you do. Until next time,
- The Road goes ever on and on
- Down from the door where it began.
- Now far ahead the Road has gone,
- And I must follow, if I can,
- Pursuing it with eager feet,
- Until it joins some larger way
- Where many paths and errands meet.
- And whither then? I cannot say.
