Wait and Hope

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Wise men counsel all despondents: wait and hope. This was the wisdom of sages and saints who saw primitive reality of flaccid resolves of people in the face of despairing events. Hunger sickness, tyranny and unpredictability of disastrous moments were meant to be tolerated with unwilled fortitude. Suffering was built into the human condition. Man was totally powerless against the elements, the turbulence of nature as well as the sword of authority. Unrecognized men, leaderless and weak could not even protest. They had only one stance: the stance of a supplicant. Mercy, kindness, pardon and such like values which assumed a superior ‘giver’or dispenser, were wisdom for the saints who had renounced social life- not sexual life- to attain this wisdom by meditation, prayer and worship. In their moments of illumination they praised renunciation as a great virtue for those who had things to give and give up: power and pelf. For the rest, that is those who failed to make both ends meet the wise advice was to “stand and wait”, the Miltonic way of serving god; or to wait for the things to happen and hope for better days: For milk and honey to rain from high above and for idyllic scenes to transform present sordidness by some divine wielder of wand.

Wait and hope experienced a change of meaning about the Industrial Revolution. By 17^th century almost all over the world man had the realization that Manna does not fall from heaven; man must work to earn his keep. Life is work and work is worship; the human time available could be wasted by waiting for things to happen - which is nonhuman. The French Revolution of 1789 also proved that waiting for any change in a despotic dispensation is foolishness. Man must catch the bull by the horn instead of waiting for the saviour to be moved by compassion with prayer. Those who waited for the marauder to stop and turn back by prayer- induced awakening of conscience simply lost their freedom and survival. The invaders never subscribed to the wisdom of wait and hope: they exploited this passive wisdom of pathological surrender to other directed wisdom.

One can wait for his love to return after 25 years mean- time hoping and praying for the paved road with green foliage growing all around for the dainty feet of his lady love to come with lithe steps. And such lovers suffer every moment with dual pain- the pain of waiting and the interminable seconds bringing emptiness and the slow emaciation of the spirit. For a modern man waiting and hoping mean idling away time doing nothing and daydreaming and fantasizing which have no logic or concrete floor to build castles on. Modern man thinks those who cannot force the moments to its critical pitch only wait and finally die as the knight in Browning’s “The Statue”. Waiting is wasting time’s allotted span to an individual by watching the hair turn grey and seasons roll by in repetitive futility.

What is hope? Hope springs eternal in the human breast- hope for what? Fulfilment of the human potential or Redemption, the unrealizable, impalpable something no mortal has remained to report? Today we wait for telephone calls; there too the passing seconds are eternities of nonexistence. We wait for appointment letters, election dates and results, the email or the plane to land or take off. Waiting for a bus or a train too is a toll on patience. At times we wait for the end of a boring film. Some people wait for the end of an infructuous life. Others wait for a war to start or a match to begin. But waiting is the most boring thing whatever the expectations. But people wait for the Helle   Bop and the Redeemer's ship to carry us to the promised land. Their cases are different as these waiters never live in this world. They are aliens in this planet. Those who hope for the things are not active players. They cannot make things happen they will simply dream of things otherworldly.

 In today’s world nothing waits for nothing. The Sun does not wait for the cyclone to cease, it rises however unseen it may be. Modern man knows there is no free lunch. There is no Alladin’s lamp to grant our wishes. No Santa Claus descends with his hoary charm to give us our hoped for things. Man today commands the robots; AI (artificial Intelligence) and biometric algorithms end our wait. Google and Alpha Zero can play games for us and make us win prizes. Machines can digitally reduce our woes and our waiting blues.

Those who wait and hope are perhaps immortals up above. They wait for man to be more responsible for fellow men and hope man to love, work and create as he believes in the pleasure of the divine.