The wet
morning found me in the city park. My daily stroll in it gives breaths of life,
the lungs are filled with the fresh air that is filtered in the blessed
gardens, and my resilience for the everyday routine is reinforced.
On this particular
occasion, during my exit from the park, I stood next to a building that I had
not noticed before. It had an elliptical shape and after a quick calculation I
came to the conclusion that it had the same dimensions with the earth but to a
smaller scale. I remained, feeling awkward for a moment but I stepped towards
it.
Upon
reaching it, on the entrance wall I read: “Waiting Room”. Nothing else. I
approached even more. The doric sign intrigued me. I went up the threshold and
opened the door. I moved on a little hesitantly until I heard a thud behind me,
the door closed and … it disappeared!
For a
moment I was panicked. However, I could make out -in the dim light -a lot of
people sitting around. Of every age and sex, of all races, as long as I could
see white and coloured ones. My gaze slowly fell on everyone’s face. They were
numerous, though. So I stopped.
“Where am I
and what are you doing here?”, I asked the bystanders.
“You are in
the Room of Hope and we are being patient. If you manage to come here you are
trapped and you can never get out, or you get out with a lot of difficulty”, an
old man replied.
What is
Hope?
Hope is the
distance between desire and its fulfilment. Obviously, it comes from thought.
Its essence is always found in the past, but its greed wants to rule even the
future. As it is known, thought is of one dimension. And it moves
simultaneously with time. Its main characteristic is that it is never contented
with what it possesses. And because it cannot achieve it, it fantasises,
anticipates, expects, that is, it hopes. And, of course, the present is always
absent. Consequently, Hope is the projection of the past onto the future.
The people
in the Room of Hope spoke their minds:
“I am the
second richest man in the world but I want to be the first.”
“I want to
gain power, to rule all the others and their fortunes.”
“I am
sitting here and I hope I’ll go to Paradise when I die. I’m scared of this life
here, it’s scary in the way we created it.”
“I want my
political party to be in office so that I can keep my job. I’m frightened of
leaving it. I’ll be at a loss if I abandon its embrace. For I hope the
politicians will offer me the worldly paradise.”
“I believe
in my religion and wait until the word of my God is revealed, at the same time
doing the contrary from what I was taught. Shall I wait long?”
“I have
been waiting for the woman I ‘m craving for. I got old waiting for her and she
has got old herself. I hope in the next life that we ‘ll be younger, things will
go better.”
“I am not someone important and I want to become
important so that the gullible people will admire me.”
“I believe in a world of justice but I refuse
to part with the injustice I have inside me.”
“I am
wicked and I hope I’ll be good hearted in the future, but what prevents me from
doing so now, I don’t know.”
The people
in the round room went on expressing their wishes, their desires. They lived
and breathed for them. They had completely forgotten the real world they lived
in; it didn’t exist for them, they weren’t interested in it. Their whole energy
was to be channelled into the future. Future resembles the most cunning enemy
who tries to find the suitable time to grab everything away from you. And you -
terrified - are sitting helpless before it.
Thought is
our dictator. It keeps us imprisoned. It prevents us from getting up, from
breaking its sneaky bonds. And it manages fine. When you are greedy and you
want to rule the future, the trap of Hope is set up automatically. As soon as you
fulfil one of your desires, Hope traps you into waiting for the next one, and
then the following, and in this way you are always waiting …
The Present
is action. It’s pure energy when there are good intentions. The thought is
cunning and always - through machination - serves its interests. And the
personal interest is ill fate for everyone but the person. Maybe for me too, but this will not be the
topic of this discussion.
The old man
was the last to speak: “A lot of things I expected to happen never happened.
Others I didn’t expect to happen did happen. Time is a bizarre notion,
sometimes it passes slowly, other times it passes quickly and in all this there
is constant waiting.”
“What do
you hope for, Sir?”
“I hope for
a painless death. Now that I come to think about it, Hope is slow death and
that’s why it always dies last.“
“And why
shouldn’t it die first?”, I asked him with the naiveté that characterises me.
“Because if
it dies first, it will give you your freedom, and you cannot stand it. ”
Inside the
room, a child was playing carelessly with his toys. His whole energy was in the
present and ignored the hopes and the desires of the rest. Was the room
invisible for him?
What do you
think?
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Note: The translation of the Greek text
into the English language was provided by Ky Al.