Skip to main content

Pandora's Hope

 

Lawrence Alma-Tadema's water-colour of an ambivalent Pandora, 1881

Hope was the last item in a box of evils, in Greek mythology. When Prometheus stole fire from the gods for the sake of human beings, Zeus (king of the gods) took revenge by sending Pandora to the earth with a box that contained all the evils. The last item in the box was hope. Interestingly, hope does not escape from the box while all the (other) evils did because Pandora closed the lid on realising that she was condemned to bring evils to the human world.

The story has found numerous interpretations. Is hope yet another evil? The ultimate evil? Or is it retained in the box because human beings are condemned to live without its benefits? Did the gods want frustration to be the human lot? Why did they then put hope into the box in the first place?

Well, we can go on asking any number of questions when we are dealing with myths and scriptures. Let us be more realistic and look at our given situations.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” as Alexander Pope sang. Life would have been quite unbearable without hope. We live (endure?) each day in the hope that tomorrow will be better. We wake up each morning these days hoping to hear better news about the pandemic. Hope – without it how much more wretched would our lives be?

Yet hope can be an evil, a terrible one at it too. Hope can render us lazy and inert. It can deceive us with the promise of the pie in the sky. Religions often do just that. Most religions teach us to endure the pains here on earth so that we will be rewarded for all that many times more in the next life. That sort of hope is an evil inasmuch as it supports the evils here implicitly. It is asking us to accept the evils without protest, without struggle, without efforts to mitigate them.

Our hopes should be pragmatic. Hope should lead us to positive action that can mitigate the evils we are confronted with. Hope should be a “confidence in a certain process of growth and development,” as philosopher Gabriel Marcel said. It is not enough to sit and hope that the pandemic will ebb and go away; we need to do our bit for that. Hope, in other words, is a sincere effort to mitigate the evils around us. Otherwise, it is a curse.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 375: "Hope was the last item in Pandora's box." What are the thoughts triggered in your mind by this statement? #Hope

Comments

  1. The world thrives on hope. We need hope in these times of Corona waves and lockdowns.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, agree with your sentiments about hope. Without thoughtful action, hope is another four letter word like fate! And how many fatalists do we remeber today?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perhaps Jacques the Fatalist is the only one to remain classical! 😊

      Delete
  3. Also, wanted to say that I like the brand new look of your blog:) All shades of Turquoise are my favourite.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Made it more mobile-friendly. In fact, Google suggested me to do that.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...