Optimism - Take 2

For the writers and the dreamers.

For all of us.

The Atlantic recently included an article called “Be Like Sisyphus,” written by Gal Beckerman.*

I was a student of Classics (M.A. 1989 University of Washington, thank you very much), and I was intrigued by the idea that anyone would ever exhort us to emulate the miserable character who, in Greek mythology, was doomed to roll an immense boulder up a hill, whereupon the boulder would roll back down again.

Forever and ever.

As Wikipedia notes, “tasks that are both laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean.” **

The article purports to be about “hopeful pessimism,” which surely sounds like an oxymoron. Hear me out (or rather, hear Gal Beckerman out).

Beckerman shares this quote by Mara van der Lugt: ***

“’If hope can’t emerge from any concrete belief that you will actually achieve your hoped-for outcomes, then what can sustain it? Values . . . The simplest way to put this is to ask yourself whether the cause or the change you are fighting for would still feel worth fighting for if you knew you’d never see it realized. [This kind of hope is] . . . driven by principles such as justice, duty, solidarity with your fellow human, and  . . . your sense of goodness. You act because you feel you must.’”

[Hopeful pessimism is] . . . driven by principles such as justice, duty, solidarity with your fellow human, and  . . . your sense of goodness. You act because you feel you must.

Beckerman goes on to say:

 “Václav Havel, the Czech dissident who would become the president of his country . . . [says of hope] that it is not a ‘prognostication’ but rather ‘an orientation of the spirit’: Hope is ‘not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.’”

For February I will share a full newsletter - complete with Two Over Easy All Day Long news and upcoming promotional campaigns, and reviews of a couple of lovely books I’ve read.

For now, I wish you strength and perseverance and a dose of hopeful pessimism for every good and just Sisyphean task you face, and leave you with a simple reiteration of Havel’s words:

Hope is . . . an ability to work for something because it is good.

(And this - I leave you with a photo of a sweet encounter
with a burro on the beach.
Because donkeys make me feel hopeful.
Always.)

*Beckerman, Gal, Be Like Sisyphus, The Atlantic, 1/22/2025 (available online at https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/01/case-for-sisyphus-and-hopeful-pessimism/681356/)(last accessed on 1/23/2025)

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

*** Mara van der Lugt, author of Hopeful Pessimism (Princeton University Press 2025), and professor of philosophy at the University of St. Andrews.