The decline of a mind is not inevitable, although it unfolds as if preordained. I know, from my own struggles with an increasingly complacent brain, that such a regression is a product of atrophy - inaction and inaction alone - rather than the fulfillment of inescapable genetic inferiority. It gets to a point where the saying "use it or lose it" attains materiality. There's no time to lament, no use in whining or pining for the exuberance of youthful enchantment. Disenchantment holds sway over human lives because individuals accept its abysmal fate to be inevitable, a predestined rationality operating on a grand and inexplicable dimension. It is easy to throw up our hands and turn hopefully towards the possibility of salvation, waiting obediently for its promised end. But promises have time after time been broken and left irreversibly fractured. The grand Promise of paradise justifies a quick slide into complacency, providing the faithless an excuse to represent faith. Follow blindly and soon you find yourself an unwitting dupe, a passive accessory to a nefarious faith that negates human freedom for the sake of vacuous Promises of transcendental bliss. If we are to be free, hope has no permanence; it cannot to located to a single point or a single entity.
Hope is in the everyday journey through the world of living and never having to turn to stone tablets to authenticate experience. Hope is ephemeral. Hope is fleeting. Hope cannot be chained down. Hope cannot be monopolized; it cannot be sold to the highest bidder. Hope is not merely mine. Hope is not merely yours. Hope is ours to discover, to uncover, to travel along this weird, bizzare, and often frustrating road called life. Hope cannot be found by staring at the heavens; it is here, in a reciprocated greeting, a knowing smile, the spontaneity of shared laughter, or the warm touch of the morning sun on a lovers embrace. It is a passing glimpse of the eternal. And transcience frustrates a natural yearning for stability and affirms the joy of human becoming. Hope disjoined from danger, detached from risk, expunged of joy and surprise, is an empty promise. Even the most atrophied mind understands that.
