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Sweet Adversity
"So long we lived in anxiety, now at last we are going to live in hope." So said the delicious French playwright Tristan Bernard when the Germans came in, occupied Paris, arrested and imprisoned him (in the World War No. I). A noble truth nobly said by a noble soul thrown into the very midst of danger and calamity. Indeed, a danger is a danger so long as it is away and has not reached us. It is the menace, the imminence that causes more fright and upsetting than the thing itself. For it is imagination that enlarges and intensifies the object and makes of us craven cowards. The uncertainty hangs like a pall and casts a disabling influence upon the mind and nerves: one does not know what exactly to do, since the full situation is not presented or grasped and a fearful speculation becomes the only occupation. But once the danger is right upon us and we are inside the jaws of death, there is an end to all speculation and anxiety; there are then two issues possible. One is that of absolute helplessness and hopelessness, of an unquestioning resignation, a quiet bowing down to the inevitable and implacable destiny. Many a victim on the gallows felt like that: an incredible quietness seized them in their last moments. Very often it is the quietness of the shadow of Death – a supreme inertness, tamas, coming over and possessing. But there is another issue, a more luminous egress. When all uncertainty is set at rest as to the in vitability of the calamity, when circumstances have really besieged us in their unshakable steel-frame and we are doomed obviously, it is then that comes the chance for the hero-soul to stand out and declare its freedom and immortality – deny and strive to reverse the obvious.
Man has something in him which is irrepressible in the
worst Page – 373 of circumstances, which can and does live outside and beyond their attacks and menaces. Adverse circumstances-the more adverse the better-are God-sent in that sense, because they tend to throw us back upon ourselves, upon our inner truth and reality, which otherwise we would not have known or recognised. And it is the nature of that truth and reality to be free and happy and hopeful absolutely. And the consciousness which possesses that temper and vibration is master of an energy, a force of execution-a will and power to do the miracle. To live in hope, to work in hope is not merely to live in illusion and to work for a chimera. On one consideration, to live otherwise, in hopelessness, cannot cure matters, even if the matter is truly and really as dark as it looks. To view a matter of fact solely and wholly in the matter of fact way does not give the right perspective of things, a proper appreciation of appearance and reality. It is well known that often we project our imagination and apprehension upon the external world and bring about or help to bring about results that were only a possibility. Our fear calls for the object feared and makes it a reality. Apart from that, however, and on a deeper consideration, to live in hope is to react against the danger apprehended, to call in a help and power that is or can be always at our disposal, which can not only console but save. Even if death be the end and there is no escape, yet we would be freed from the wounds and scars that it inflicts upon our being with its ignorance and unconsciousness, we would learn to pass over luminously and in the full freedom of the spirit. Hope is the image of the soul's prophetic vision. It is not just a way of escape from present sorrows, but a bridge-head leading to victory and fulfilment. Page - 374
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