LOCKDOWN SPECIAL: Hope in the times of Corona

For what it’s worth, we can derive some alacrity from the fact that the haplessness caused by Corona is rapaciously gnawing at everyone, some more than others. For those of us who are privileged enough to have food and shelter, a perplexity over the vast, interminable disruptions caused by an infinitesimal virus is alienating to say the very least. Many might exit from this existential scrimmage feeling an existential convulsion. But given our unwilling habituation vis-a-vis the peculiarities of time, I suspect that you and I might end up being antipodes to some our or contemporaries, in gliding past this windswept phase feeling just a tad bit querulous but with more garrulity and an inexorable hopefulness that renders our physiological duress as superfluous.

I don’t mean to imply that hopefulness is a masked substitute for optimism. On the contrary, one can be hopeful even while being pessimistic. Pessimism is, for the most part, an alternative for optimism when the latter becomes too cumbersome to endure. You could, as a pessimist, mournfully cite the bleakness of the present situation that extends onto its future prospects while also continuing to push your rock as Sisyphus despite that bleakness. Hope is often known to flounder, not against the seeming impossibility of something, but despite that impossibility. This is one of the primary reasons why I am so fascinated by, and aspiring of hopefulness.

My admiration got hope also stems from the overarching grace that makes it hover above and beyond the present contingencies, in a might that almost strips the situation of its authority, and all this with the daring audacity of a single, mushy heart. That is all that hopefulness essentially needs to reside in, survive, or be nurtured by, given the paucity of courage, strength and willingness. Instead, hope is culpable of enlivening courage, willingness and strength, and can even fan their sparkling into a fire that the mighty big contingencies find difficult to douse.

I am not penning down this random musing out of an afternoon slumber that resulted in a utopian daydream, but after reflecting over some of the murkiest segments of my lived experiences.

Since one’s infatuation towards hope is thoroughly subjective, and yet, never stagnant, I find that the highest contribution that our humble selves are sometimes capable of offering is the very act of according their hope towards what they stubbornly yearn for. A wise person once said that the Universe loves a stubborn heart, to which I would like to add that the Universe, is in fact compelled into loving a stubborn heart (as Bauji is compelled into loving Raj in DDLJ), because it is exhausted of any valid reason to dislike it after all. Hope shares this attribute of stubbornness at its very core. Thus, if our imagination remains stubborn enough in its yearning, and is caused by that stubbornness to persist, the Universe is left with no alternative but to surrender to it.

Sincerely,

A Hopeful & Privileged Romanticist in the times of Quarantine