September 5, 2015: Hope in the Time of Cabals

Okay, I’m tweaking the language of Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, but somehow it seems very apropos (I’m thinking about the recent picture of the young Syrian boy lying dead on a beach in Turkey after his family tried to escape the violence in Syria—his brother and mother also died in the attempt to flee). And no, I’m still not a pessimist seeing only wasteland and blind to beauty. There is beauty, not just the hope of beauty. I suppose that’s what is driving this post: With so much beauty running through it all—in fact fundamental to it all—how is it that we humans seem to create so much anguish?

Hope is an interesting compass, directing us to some place we are not. But it is not hope alone that will fulfill us. In fact, hope misused can delude us, creating false notions—projected ideals—that can never be found. It seems to me that what we hope for is already available and the issue is letting go of our imposed notions of paradise. Perhaps survival (especially of our ideals) is so pervasive that we feel beauty is something we have to do. Nevertheless, when overrun by those who think their cabals represent the way, I think we’re always right to fight or flee. Of course there are cabals of many flavors, including ones we have formed internally, populated by our thoughts and feelings—and our hope. We can perhaps run or fight from external cabals, but those internal cabals are nearly impossible to recognize, much less to turn away from.

And so we continue to circle in the woods—with attitude. Beauty doesn’t wait, it doesn’t have to, it just is. Hope in the time of cabals? Well, the latter is always suspicious and in the time of cabals, the former is serious medicine with serious side effects, as witnessed by the death of folks—especially children—fleeing cabals.