How about a Saturday morning with some Friedrich Nietzsche?
Nietzsche wasn’t attacking meaning. He was attacking delay. He saw hope, when applied to this life, as something dangerous, not noble or brave, but postponing. Hope whispers that relief is coming if you just wait long enough. That suffering has an expiration date. That the ledger will balance itself if you just stay patient. Nietzsche called that cowardice because it asks nothing of you except endurance without acceptance.
What he offered instead was harder and cleaner ... AMOR FATI, which is Latin for love your fate. You don't need to tolerate fate or negotiate with it. Love it, embrace it... all of it. Both the suffering and success welded together, inseparable.
Hope belongs to fantasy and not in reality.
The truth lands heavier the older that I get. Youth runs on hope because it hasn’t paid enough invoices yet. Life hasn’t collected. Over time, hope thins out and reality does what it always does. It shows up on schedule and charges interest. Loved ones die before we want them to. Marriages fail, cars break down, layoffs aren't just counted for CNBC, institutions rot, friendships end over spilled wine, kneecaps buckle and children suffer in ways we cannot fix.
Promises don’t age well. Somewhere along the line, I realized hope didn’t shield me from any of these things, it only made the waiting longer and the disappointment sharper.
That is where I am now. I have zero use for hope as a tool. I don’t trust it and I don’t lean on it. I don’t outsource my footing to daydreams. Let modern politicians mumble hope into microphones while offering nothing but recycled lies. Hope is cheap currency. It buys applause and delivers nothing.
Wasting time hoping doesn’t soften the blow, it sharpens it.
That isn’t bitterness.
That is clarity.
Don Shepley never taught hope. He taught me to position myself towards life's hurdles.
Square your shoulders.
Bow your neck.
Get low and push forward.
When the world fights back, you don’t ask it to be kind, you drive through it. That isn’t optimism, that is discipline. That is acceptance married to effort. That is amor fati in work boots.
Here is where people get it all wrong. Rejecting hope does not mean rejecting faith.
Hope wants outcomes, Faith doesn’t.
Hope demands guarantee, Faith asks for none.
Christ never said, “This will all work out.”
Not once did he waiver. In the garden, He didn’t hope His way out, He submitted.
“Not my will, but Yours.”
On the cross, He didn’t forecast relief, He entrusted Himself. That is my Faith stripped of illusion.
Faith isn’t wishful thinking.
Faith isn’t optimism with religious language.
Faith doesn’t bargain with reality.
Faith tells me that even if this does not improve, I will not abandon what is true. I will say my prayer and position myself to fight through and not sit there and daydream that the bullshit fades away.
Faith holds in good times without arrogance and in bad times without collapse. It doesn’t promise me a rescue plan. It promises meaning and meaning is enough for me.
You can lose hope and still have faith. In fact, sometimes hope must die for faith to mature. Hope wants the future to bend your way. Faith stands firm when it doesn’t. Faith lives in the present tense and always shows up. Faith shoulders weight and keeps moving without applause.
Hope decorates daydreams.
Faith carries load.
If hope ever returns, it won't get the steering wheel. It rides quietly in the backseat, where fantasies belong. The work up front is done by acceptance, integrity, discipline, and faith. Faith in ourselves, faith in showing up, and faith in the promise of eternal grace beyond this ledger.
Love life as it is.
Carry suffering without flinching.
Accept success without illusion.
The sun will rise this morning at 7:15 a.m. I won't hope it to rise. It shows up to shine on the good days and shine on the bad days.
Holy Crap.... I chalked a heavy Chalkboard for this Saturday before Christmas.
Have faith that today is astonishing.
