Neither Hope Nor Fear

From Menletter November 2006

By Tim Baehr

I heard the phrase "neither hope nor fear" in a conversation a few weeks ago, and the phrase has haunted me ever since. The guy I was talking with ascribed it to Cervantes, but a search of the Internet yields a variety of possible sources, from Christian sermons to Samuel Johnson to de Tocqueville to an eighth-grade essay to an article on agnosticism to Buddhist and Sufi teachings to an article on Middle East politics. Every one seems to have a different idea of what it is like to live with neither hope nor fear.

Most of us men, I suspect, live in a constant state of hope and fear. Hope for a better life. Fear that we won't measure up. Hope for peace in the world's hot spots. Fear that it will never happen. Hope for our children. Fear for their safety.

Hope is a useful thing. It gives us goals to strive for.

Fear is a useful thing. It keeps us from becoming complacent; it keeps us on our toes.

But some of our hope and fear is far from rational; in fact, they may also be unconscious emotions that direct our aspirations and our actions. Both of the emotions are directed at the future. They give rise to two more that are directed at the past: disappointment and regret.

We hope for something. It might be a raise, a new car, a sexual conquest. It doesn't happen. We're disappointed. We regret the foolishness of hoping for it and working for it. Or we do get the something we hoped for. It makes us happy for a while. Then it wears out, or turns out to be not exactly what we thought we wanted, or we just get tired of it. And we're disappointed. We regret our foolishness in hoping for it and working for it.

We fear something. It happens. We may be disappointed in the outcome, even though we predicted it, in a way. We may regret not doing more to prevent it, even if our control over the situation was minimal or nonexistent. Or it doesn't happen and, along with feeling relief, we regret our foolishness for succumbing to irrational fears.

What would it be like to live with neither hope nor fear, regret nor disappointment? Would we be numb or uncaring? Would we be in a constant state of foolish optimism, in which even the most tragic events would be for the best, if only we could take the long view?

I don't think so.

I think living with neither hope nor fear means being acutely aware of the present moment as an accumulation of everything that has occurred in the past and a launching spot into an unknowable future. We can prepare for the future and learn from the past, and that's healthy. But what may be unhealthy is an unreasonable emotional attachment to outcomes, either future or past. Today may be tomorrow's yesterday, and that attitude can help us endure unpleasant days. But today is also the only day we've got – yesterday is gone forever, and tomorrow doesn't yet exist. Hope, fear, regret, and disappointment are about things that do not currently exist. Yet they persist in nearly all of us.

It can be very hard to live totally in the present moment, with neither hope nor fear, regret nor disappointment. I can't imagine that more than a few people have managed to do that consistently. Well, except for very young children, and there may be a lesson in that.