Spes

Most of my posts tend to be fairly academic. I'm going to try to stray away from that for today.
I'd like to talk about hope today, the forgotten virtue. Love and faith are always lauded and given so much attention, but hope is usually glossed over.
But why hope? What virtuous merit does hope have? I believe that faith is the virtue meant for the scientist and the scholar, and love is the virtue meant for the miserly. But hope is the virtue of the artist. Hope is the poet's virtue.
It is the artist--the writer, the painter, the sculptor, the poet--that truly sees life for what it is. So many philosophers have sat on their high chairs and hypothesized about life and its purpose, but the ones that have truly captured our attention are the ones who speak to us. The ones who know the human heart and speak with the eloquence of a person whose soul is more than cold steel and mechanics.
This is the way that we work as humans. We aren't machines. We don't calculate and plan. We don't always do what's rational. We have more needs than simply a suitable climate and food and water.
The artist truly thinks with his soul. His art does not depict something mathematically articulate or scientifically unique. It depicts true human essence. The artist knows what true emotion is.
So it is that the artist also knows how depressing life truly is. We are surrounded by greed, lust, pride, wrath, gluttony, sloth, and envy. We destroy others' lives for our private benefit. We walk all over those we think under us. We treat humans like common tools. We scorn, despise and hate other people because of how they were born. We wage war against others for nothing other than to make sure we feel secure.
How are we supposed to find any requiem in this despairing life? We live for maybe a hundred years and die, and that's it. The poet sees through the crap that we have hidden our true insecurities within and comes to one of two conclusions: all life ans society is a sham and there is nothing worth anything, or that there must be more to life than what we see.
This is why hope is the virtue of the poet. Hope gets us through the truly depressing. Hope tells us that there must be more to our existence than a short chance to become whatever we can in a few decades. Hope tells us our fifteen minutes of fame is not the greatest extent of who we can be. Hope tells us that all our efforts are not in vain. Hope tells us that there is some bright future waiting for us. Hope is the forgotten virtue, but the virtue that will truly make everything worth it.