I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.
Interpretation
Hope and despair are interconnected, and one cannot understand true hope without experiencing despair.
In this quote, Thomas Merton suggests that the experience of despair is a necessary counterpart to understanding hope. He implies that hope is only meaningful when one has encountered the depths of despair, highlighting the complexity of human emotions and the dual nature of our experiences in life. This insight reflects a deep understanding of the human condition, where the contrast between light and darkness can intensify our appreciation of both.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming challenges, you might use this quote to illustrate the importance of experiencing hardship.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
I write to save someone's life, probably my own
.....joy runs deeper than despair.
On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.
Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow.
Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.
When I write, I feel like an optometrist, constantly flipping between lenses and asking, 'Is this better? Is this?' Slowly, the work comes into focus.
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