On Memories and Hopes

  

An Old Man’s Hope

            I am an old man, so I think about the past a lot.  I remember scenes and images from my youth: walking up a hill in East Wenatchee when I was seven, playing football in a cow pasture when I was twelve.  I locate events: “She was born in 1947, so she would have been 18 at the beginning of 1966.”

            For what should an old man hope?

            Young men hope—they look forward to milestones like finishing school, marriage, becoming a father, or career success.  The good things they desire are possible because they can reasonably expect to live decades more.  By contrast, old men remember.  They may (or may not) have accomplished the things for which they hoped, but they don’t hope any longer.

            This contrast between youth and old age is often attributed to Aristotle, though I can’t find the quote this morning, not even with the aid of google and the Internet.  It is an instructive comparison, because it illustrates how hope is a forward-looking virtue.  Hope desires something in the future.  We might wish that history was different, but we can’t hope that it was different.  The Mariners had a wonderful season in 2001, but they did not make it to the World Series.

            I published Understanding Hope in 2022, having written dozens of essays on topics related to hope beginning in 2014, the year I turned 60.  Thus, my philosophical explorations of hope can be located in my middle age years. 

(I’ve often joked that we are young until 35, middle-aged until 70, and old after that.  I referred to myself as “almost old” when I was still 69.  Few people find humor in the joke, but Hank Helsabeck liked it.)

Linking hope with youth and memory with age would fit Aristotle, who built his philosophy on observation.  (Remember Raphael’s School of Athens, which pictures Plato pointing up—to the realm of the forms, we imagine—and Aristotle motioning down—showing that wisdom is found in the observable world.)  Given a naturalistic take on the world, we can all understand Aristotle’s epigram, if he really said it.  Death brings an end to our projects, leaving nothing to hope for.  Young men still have time, so they can hope.

Now that I am old, do I still hope?  I might hope that some novel I write will find readers.  I do hope that my occasional sermons will help listeners grow in love and discipleship.  In this life, I hope to see intimations of the kingdom of God.  Beyond this life, I hope for resurrection.  I hope to grow forever in the knowledge of God and to participate in the eternal community, Jesus’ people.

It’s easy to type the words, but the ideas are big.  To be God’s friend, to be part of the body.  According to the New Testament, these things are true right now.  I am already a friend of God, and I am already a member of Christ’s body.  They are already true, yet I hope that they will be “truer” in the resurrection.