Hi everyone,
For those of you who don’t know, a dear friend of mine, Rabbi Pollock, asks me to speak (briefly) at services every year at holiday time. This year’s theme is: “What dare we hope?”
When I was 13, my ninth grade social studies teacher, Mr. Hahn, sent our class home one day with the following assignment: ask one of your parents what historical figure, dead or alive, had the greatest influence on their life. When the votes were tallied the next day, Jesus narrowly beat out John Kennedy, with Abe Lincoln finishing a distant third. My mother’s choice, Friedrich Nietzsche, received no additional votes. The choice did, however, prompt a half pitying, half affectionate laugh from Mr. Hahn. You see, I already had a reputation as being different and I suppose a little tortured. Mr. Hahn gave me the same mixed laugh when he handed back a test on which I had incorrectly answered the question: Whom was the colony of Jamestown named after? I hadn’t a clue—I had probably spent that class staring into the abyss, with the abyss staring back at me—so I wrote the name of the only James I knew, figuring it would be a long shot. That would be Henry.
My mother’s sage, Nietzsche, said that “hope is the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torment of man.” I find that a bit hyperbolic, but I must confess, like my mother, I do view hope with some suspicion. Hope springs eternal, as evolutionary psychologists see it, not necessarily because the future is bright, but because we are genetically programmed to see it as bright. If we didn’t see the world as bright, it would be hard to get out of bed in the morning, and therefore, exceedingly difficult to attract a mate. Without a mate, of course, our genes would not be passed on. Having attracted a mate, and having had a child and passed my genes on, sometimes I wonder, as many middle-aged and older people do: isn’t it time, perhaps, to go back to bed? Really, it’s a thought... By the way if you feel hopeful, because you think hopeful people view the world more realistically then non-hopeful people, there are a number of studies in the psychological literature that suggest just the opposite. These studies say that hopefulness and happiness both require you to unconsciously spin the world in overly positive and often, self-deceiving, ways.
So what dare I hope? For nothing grand, I’m afraid. The grand things I actually try to do something about to the best of my ability, however limited that is. World peace and the end of hunger may come, and I’ll be very happy if they do, but I’m not going to torture myself hoping for them. No, I limit my Nietzschean torment to little selfish things. Like…I hope someday my daughter, Micaela, has the tattoo on her leg—which sometimes reminds me of Guernica turned on end—removed, so I don’t have to keep looking at her with a hand over one eye. I hope one of my three 10-minute plays, all of which received honorable mentions in prior Boston Theater Marathons, is produced this year. What fun that would be! And, finally, a big selfish one: I hope Hildy stays healthy. For that hope, I’m willing to endure a lifetime of torment—such is the nature of love.
Have a good year!
