Reconciling Difficult truths

“Death Smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back”

–Marcus Aurelius

These are thoughts from a wandering mind, from a person who has battled depression since a teen. I am not disparaging faith here. My mother is a woman of faith and everything she has taught me about God and faith has helped me DEEPLY and tremendously during my darkest times. So I believe faith in God is perfectly reasonable and a beautiful thing when done with love and purity, just like how my mother goes about it. However, as a man trying to find his way in this modern world, rife with a miasma of distractions, materialism, foolishness, hubris and greed, one must look within and try to humble oneself. To humble yourself is to understand that life is chaotic, life is a wind that will knock you off course without a single iota of concern for your well being. Life is hard, life is mysterious, we can plot our course and do our very best but life can and will impose itself on us. To be humble is to let go of hubris, to let go of the idea that you understand more than you do, it’s to stop presupposing the situation. As a man trying to make sense of life, I have found that to be humble is to have no expectation, to have no yearning for hope or faith beyond the present. I understand that I must “Be still…” as Gautama Buddha once said. I understand that I must be humble first, here, now, in the moment, and not suppose life will just be better on its own, Jesus Christ once said, ” For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”, I like this quote because it is a beautiful way of saying, humble yourself before life itself humbles you.

This will sound pessimistic but I’m steadily a very optimistic person. However, reconciling the difficult truths about life will make us stronger, as well as, help us build goals, desires, and motivation from a solid truthful present state of mind, rather than a state of mind held up by flimsy and often insidiously deceptive ideas like hope and faith, to which neither actually exist in any reality at any present time. Both hope and faith (faith as it is used in religion or spirituality) are concepts of the future or past, never present in the existing space we can actively control or change. I think it is perfectly fine to have faith, but understand that God is not a genie, if you are going to worship God then do so out of love not fear of Hell fire or expectation of blessings. Also, while you worship God, remember to work on yourself in your present moments, do not idly stand by and hope God will solve your problems, then lash out when things do not improve.

The hard truth about life is that hope is a liar, there is no magic over the horizon. We often live in this headspace that has been inundated by stories, tales, parables, sayings, etc., all the tricks and conditioning that words, literature, and culture have to offer. In this headspace, we are ALL conditioned to believe that, “ things are bad now, but if we can do better now and endure, they will, “get better”. We see evidence of this conditioned perception within widely beloved and known sayings like “ time heals all wounds”, or “the night is darkest just before it turns dawn”, etc. Colloquial and otherwise traditional sayings like these are viewed as positive because they seem to breed positivity and allow even the most downtrodden to clasp to one of the only things they can seemingly have for free in this world, and that is hope. Sometimes we trade in our sense of purpose and urgency to explore or develop, for this empty hope, that one day it shall be, “better” just because we hope that it will. This hope dulls the efforts you make, because of the false comfort it gives. It is similar to a drug that gets you high very rapidly but is only stimulating you and is not truly “healing” you. Hoping is trying to cheat, I say, don’t hope, just be. Whatever comes will come, you only can operate in your present space, do not give up the energy or motivation because you are in hope of the “future you” digging yourself out of your proverbial hole.

As a person who tries to be stoic and humble, my issue with, “hope”, is that these hopes and desires tend to push us to create false realities to chase, and while positive visualization is useful, we should not act or operate under the notion that we are promised something. We should eliminate the “promised land”, and instead operate via strict virtue. So, instead of some sort of complex reward system that often is full of empty and unobtainable realities, we can expect nothing more but what is in our present, and while fully present, we can do our very best here and now, at all times, and as a result our future reflects the work we do presently. My example for this is a parable about two laborers that are paid to dig an individual ditch but before they start work they are told that they would receive shovels to help dig their respective ditches. One worker decides to start digging with their hands until he gets a shovel, while the other decides to wait for the shovel. The one who started digging with their hands is a man operating out of virtue, he does not hope for a shovel when he has serviceable hands that can begin his work NOW in the present (this is something Epictetus talks about in his discourses). The other worker is operating on hope, his work is currently not being done, he is less valuable now than the other worker because he is inactive hoping for a shovel that was promised. Hope breeds stagnation in your present now, while virtue and operating presently with what you have, breeds productivity and results.

Hope is like faith, it can be a nice way to operate if you are trying to come to grips with why the world around you seems so unfair and honestly chaotic. In faith, people put their emotions and desires into this realm of magical possibilities, where everything in their life will get better if they stay good and true to whatever ideals or beliefs they chose to guide them. Hope is the same thing as faith, except there is no system attached, hope is just your mind trying to do the same thing as faith but it’s more personal and internal, you hope through yourself outward, in faith you hope through yourself into something.

Religion promises better times for people who adhere to whatever doctrine a person subscribes to. By utilizing faith, people teach themselves that their situation will get better through time and adherence to the subscribed religion. Hope promises better via the internal mindset, it plays off those stories and cultural “attitude” signals. These “attitude signals”, are mental devices produced by our culture, that are used to drive home the idea that even though in this life you are treated unfairly or bad things happen to you, those bad things do not last forever and that someday you will finally live a happier life. This utilization of faith or hope is not entirely a bad thing and it is I believe introduced to people with the good intentions of helping them, but I liken it to lying to make someone feel better or “sugarcoating” if we want to use a colloquial term to describe it. This sugarcoating is not as effective as being honest with someone, the honesty is often harsh but will help the person MUCH more than sugarcoating will.

There is a problem with this deeply engrained set of cultural ideas, mainly the problem is, it’s a blatant LIE. Life is not destined to get better. Life could very well get insurmountably WORSE. You could be going through a rough patch and tell yourself, “this too shall pass”, but unfortunately for millions of real people, life can very much be a tragedy that even Shakespeare would think too harsh. Plenty of people live lives that do not get better, or in fact, get worse. This is the reality of our universe, it sounds bleak but it is entirely within the realm of reality. Things are not destined to become terrible either but we must acknowledge the inverse and be strengthened by our own fragility, strengthened by our own humanity, empowered by the fact that we are at the mercy of things beyond our control, but we can control ourselves in the present with enough practice.

My point, in conclusion, is, please understand that nothing is promised. I would urge you to not be a “hopeful” stoic but an active and unrelenting stoic. This is closely related to Marcus Aurelius’s quote regarding, “smiling back at death”. We need to reconcile the difficult truth that life is uncontrollable. We MUST do our best each present-day to improve and do well for ourselves, however, our hard work is not promised a happy ending.

I think this bleak yet real outlook is a position of power, mentally. For me, it’s an energizing thought, that for every story of someone being down and out and getting back up and rising to the top, there are multiple untold stories of people being down and out and absolutely being unfairly torn down by life for good. Understand that we are dust in the wind. We control what we can, we motivate ourselves, we fight and fight, or as the great poet Dylan Thomas once said, we “do not go gentle into that good night”, so to speak, but at the end of it all, we are at the mercy of a chaotic world. Never forget this, your dreams are not destined, you may realize your worse fears in life. With this knowledge that you are not promised what you hope for no matter how “good” you are or how hard you try, do well to not shield your mind from this reality with false hope and blind faith. Understand, and reconcile the difficult truths. Motivate via inner strength rather than the hope that the universe will pat you on the head and say “good job”, and give you what you want, it won’t, the universe is cold and unfeeling, but it is beautiful and as humans we are born from this universe, we are the product of the primeval atom and connected to it, and if you are a person of deep loving faith, you learned that we come from God but God owes us nothing, we are the ones being tested, we are the ones who must endure. Trust in yourself, smile at the bright sky and night stars, and live free of worry but more importantly free of hope. Don’t hope, just live, expect nothing, and be present.

Final Note: I don’t mean to be devoid of positive energy in pursuit of a better “self” or circumstance, but instead I mean to say, understanding and believing in yourself and what you can do in the present is far sturdier a mindset for any situation than investing in to some form of hoping.

If your default is to not look to the horizon but look inward and work well during your present you will be much more productive.

Interestingly enough one of my favorite quotes regarding this does not come from any of the master stoics but from a fictional “zen” master of otherworldly proportions and that quote comes from Jedi Master Yoda when he said…

“All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was… what he was doing.”- Master Yoda

This is basically my sentiments. Hope is that, “looking to the horizon”, the inverse of which is focusing on what you are doing in the present.

I do not mean to disparage anyone’s techniques with dealing with life whether it’s through faith or hope. I only mean to posit this alternative perception because it helped me become a better me, and it may help others similar to me become better and more “active in their own rescue”, as Aurelius says.

Thank you for Reading.

To my Ma, I love you and thank you for teaching me about God through love, and not through expectations or fear.

To my Dad, I love you, and thank you for teaching me to believe in my self and never give up on my dreams!

I love you both deeply!

Written By: Marcos Lopez, on 3/25/2021 (Posted here on 3/29/2021)