Eternal hope

"... sagacity says, 'Surely one must not kill hope.' 'You hypocrite,' replies the eternal, 'why do you talk so equivocally; of course there is a hope that should be killed, just as there is a lust, a craving, and a longing that should be killed - the earthly hope should be killed, because not until then is one rescued by the true hope, and that is why the sufferer should not even want to "accept release" (Hebrews 11:35) on temporality's terms.'" - Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits


Earthly hope is very pleasant to the mind and the heart, even when it so improbable as to be more of a desperate wish than a hope, because it fills the imagination with beautiful pictures of everything temporal healed and set right - of health and wealth and happiness, of the fulfillment of life's "little dreams" (like a house in the country with a wrap-around porch, or a home full of children, or a long and loving marriage, or recognition and respect). But to make those hopes the great desire of one's heart - to think of "the temporal as the highest and the eternal as a kind of desperate standby" (Kierkegaard again) - is in the end to lose these hopes themselves, and their fulfillment, or even if one does experience the happiness of their fulfillment in a temporal sense, it is still in the end to lose the highest hope of all: that which is eternal.

So it is better not to hope for those things at all - to kill them when they appear - that one may set one's heart on the greatest and highest hope without distraction or reservation. Is there a sense of loss, at the thought of killing these hopes and thus not pursuing their fulfillment and obtaining their promised happinesses? Yes, there is; but it is a better loss than the alternative, which is to never become alive in the eternal hope, to never pursue that eternal fulfillment and obtain eternal happiness.