Hope: the engine that drives human activity (and Vegas)

This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is, “hope.”

Remember the story of Pandora’s Box? Pandora was like Eve, only instead of being told not to eat an apple, Pandora was told not to open a box. Of course she opened it anyway, only to find it contained all the evils of the world. The evils flew out, as evils are wont to do, and poor Pandora poked around in the bottom of the box, desperately searching for something good amid all the horror. And what she found was Hope.

Two thoughts come to mind when I consider this story. First is what I’ll call Pandora’s Paradox: she needed hope to find hope. What if, when disease and hate and all the other horrors had flown out of the box and into the world, Pandora had given up? Had become so horrified and so discouraged at what she released into the world, that she slammed the lid of the box shut, drank an entire box of wine, and curled up in the corner of her room in a fetal position? Hope would probably still be sitting at the bottom of that box. But Pandora must have already had some hope, or she wouldn’t have bothered looking in the box to see if anything remained, if anything could be salvaged.

I think there’s a lesson we can learn from Pandora’s Paradox. To find hope, you have to look for it. It doesn’t come flying out of the box and into your face. It lies there quietly under all the misery and messiness, waiting to be found. But if you have no hope, it’s hard to look for any–or to do much of anything else. That paradox seems to be at the root of depression, at least philosophically (not biochemically, obviously). When you’re way down deep in depression, you can’t muster up enough hope to find hope.

The second thought that comes to mind when I consider the story of Pandora–and the story of Eve–is that both stories involve setting up humans–and specifically women–to be blamed for the evils of the world. Here’s this fascinating, beautiful (and in the case of the apple, edible) object:

DON’T TOUCH IT.

Now, seriously, anyone could predict how just about any human of any gender is going to respond to that setup. I might have zero interest in that apple or box–until you tell me I can’t have it. I’m far too tired from my vacation (just got back last night) to do any in-depth analysis of gender and creation myths or rant about the scapegoating of women throughout history, but let’s just say my sympathies are with Pandora and Eve. They were totally set up.

OK, back to hope–and a little bit of philosophy. It seems to me that hope is the engine that drives virtually all of human activity. Hope is what leads us to believe that our efforts will matter. Why would we do anything if we didn’t think it would matter? If we were convinced our actions had no meaning, no point? We might do the bare minimum to survive, but even then, if we didn’t believe our actions would help us survive… see what I mean? Hope drives us. Hope makes us get up each morning and try to make our lives better. Hope is what drives me to write: hope that someone will enjoy reading my words, hope that those words will find an audience.

I mentioned earlier that I just got back from vacation. I took the husband to Vegas for his birthday. That trip makes me think of two particular kinds of hope. First, husband and I flew for the first time and were around tons of people for the first time since pre-pandemic. That act required hope: hope we wouldn’t get sick, hope that our vaccines will protect us from the Delta variant. Apparently a lot of people are feeling hopeful, because the Vegas Strip was *crowded*, and almost no one was masked.

Second–and this is not exactly an earth-shattering insight–Vegas was built on hope. Hope is the root of gambling, and a gambling addiction is, among other things, hope pathologized. This hand, this pull of the slot machine, this roll of the dice will be the one that makes me rich. That digs me out of the hole I’ve dug for myself. That pays my rent this month.

We visited the Mob Museum yesterday, and part of the story the exhibits tell is the story of the American West in general and Las Vegas in particular: people shedding their old identities and going west in the *hope* of building new lives and making fortunes. Plenty did. Plenty didn’t. And plenty still try.

As for us? We had a blast. Maybe being around approximately twenty gazillion people wasn’t smart, but it helped restore our hope that there will be normal life after this pandemic, that we’ve made it through the worst of it, and we can build back our lives on the other side of it. For us, Vegas was, in some sense, hope restored.