Hope, too, can be given…

Posted on by ben Alexander

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

–Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

25 thoughts on “Hope, too, can be given…”

  1. Hope is a very expensive thing. False hope, like fools gold is not something some of us can afford, yet all we have in the depths of despair. Daring to hope is like daring to dream – too rich for my blood, yet all I can do.

      1. I can only speak for myself, David. From where I stand I suppose I don’t have a clue about what others can afford emotionally to invest in.

  2. Elie Wiesel’s story of not giving up hope in the most hopeless situation is the grandest example of his uplifting quote. He embodies his words. ๐Ÿ’–

  3. Viktor Frankl, describes that moment where hope came him through ‘seeing’ his wife (in his mind/heart) when he thought he could not go on. He also tells that he later learned that she had been dead by that point already. Unless you want to call his ‘vison’ an error or even a sign of mental illness (I am disinclined to do either) – you have to admit that the case shows a complex transpersonal interaction…

    1. yes, fair enough, Barbara… it’s a strong point.
      but… I wonder.. (I’m just thinking aloud) – perhaps she gave him hope when they were together, which continued to give him strength even after they were separated?

      1. of course David, that is a strong bond/rational and emotional explanation which as I read it already goes a bit beyond what I sense as ‘flat’ in Wiesel here, but like I said…

          1. just remembered the point I loved best in E.Wiesel’s novel/memoir? where one prisoner in view of those tortured cries out ‘where is g-o-d?’ (transcription mine) and the narrator replies (to himself) – ‘there he is, hanging there..’. – nothing flat in that. I bow in silence.

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