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   simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 13:46:13 JST simsa03
   The way I think about my own dying and death has changed over the decades. From musings soaked in fantasies, images, longings, stories of heroism and sacrifice, to a far more mundane and matter-of-fact estimate of what I may have to confront and go through in the moments of dying. In thinking about this topic, or by thinking with the help of this topic, I learn more and more what terrors.(but also what joys) I made my life eschew until a large part of my "how-it-feels-to-be-myself" (the tò tí ên eînai, so to speak) became to consist in this how the stasis feels that results from the eschewing. A large factor that helps in this clarity is the vanishing of hope. Or rather: the becoming unimportant of hope. As this conduit of imagery dries up, clarity arises from some other.
   
   #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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     ghostdancer (ghostdancer@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 01-Dec-2023 16:23:25 JST ghostdancer

     in reply to

     @simsa03 I think hope maybe important but only when it helps you to go forward, otherwise can transform itself in a weight that leads to deceit and despair in the long run. The best is when, as you say, you can see through it and find the clarity. BTW Have a nice weekend.

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 00:30:37 JST simsa03

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     • ghostdancer
     Thanks. You too. (I'll have a load of work at the job but it will be fine.)
     
     I often come back to the different forms that hope can take, esp. with different ages. Young people's hope is about them and the world, about looking forward, nourished by a lot of energy. The hope of the old (or older) is different: There is a form of hope that arises exactly when the experience of failure sets in. In this hope the difference between oneself and the world seems sharper, and with it the relief that, thanks heaven, the world is not the same as one's life, so it doesn't have to be about one's personal fears and outlooks. The complexity and the age of the world comes more to attention, and that things will turn out well exactly because they no longer need to be about oneself.
     
     I find this hope of the older folks quite different from that of the younger people who haven't failed yet and didn't have that experience. And likewise, older people should connect to this "other" hope, for one in order not to be a leecher on the young (quite cringeworthy to see), and to feed the young in their despair about the world for the other.
     
     In that sense, I'm not "against" hope as my esarlier post may have suggested. In that earlier context, I spoke of the absence of hope, and the needlessness of hope.
     
     cc #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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     ghostdancer (ghostdancer@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 02:50:13 JST ghostdancer

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     @simsa03 Wow, that was deep took a little time to read and absorb. I did not thought that you were against hope, what I understood is that with age you learn put hope aside or watch through it to see the reality and not the distortion that the weight of the hope brings that can make us not see what it is but an idealized image of what we hope to be.
     Anyway this second toot/dent/post gives much more to think about and consider. 👍

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Saturday, 02-Dec-2023 10:49:53 JST simsa03

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     • ghostdancer
     Nice of you to say this, thank you! And yes, I go with "dents". :-)
     
     I'm not sure I would phrase it the way you do and speak of hope as something that distorts the way reality is or how it appears. Hope, like expectation, is a ways to sense the future (like perception is one for snesing the present, and remebrance one for sensing the past). I prefer to call hope a sense organ, something by which we can "see" the future and bring it into the present. It conveys a sense of possibility, and in doing that helps prevent the present from becoming literal and one-sided. With hope we are able to not fall into the trap of unambiguousness and unequivocalness. Which is necessary because when times become literal and unambiguous, they become violent and belligerent. A sense of ambivalence, of varieties of possibilities, is needed to keep peace present in a period of time. Thus I wasn't talking how hope distorts (or may distort) our view on reality, but what may be seen (or what may be perceivable) when hope is not interfering.
     
     cc #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten
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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 03-Dec-2023 09:30:47 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     @simsa03 Boy, that little dab of Aristotle sent me down the rabbit hole...

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Sunday, 03-Dec-2023 09:42:50 JST simsa03

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     • tinydoctor
     Glad you recognized it. :-)
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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 03-Dec-2023 10:39:36 JST tinydoctor

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     @simsa03 Among other things, it brought to mind a fragment of some story about Cu Chuliann, the Celtic culture hero; he and his gang are hanging out by a stream on a fine day, lying in the grass and drinking, the guys are arguing about music, what's the best instrument, tune, type of music. Cu Chuliann is duly asked what the best music is, after a pause, he answers, "The music of what is." I think that music may be easier to hear as I age (whilst I've lost the upper range of my hearing).

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     simsa03 (simsa03@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 25-Dec-2023 01:37:52 JST simsa03

     in reply to

     • tinydoctor
     @tinydoctor Coming back to this reply of yours, I find there is a connection between "the music of what is" and the "hope from the autumn of life" that I have in mind. Not sure yet how but it keeps me strolling...
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