What Hope Remains?

“It seems a lifetime ago that I struggled with temptations I have now conquered.”

I’m sitting on a park bench surrounded by poplar trees, reaching for the skies. Cottonwoods, I think they’re also called. A grin spreads across my face. ‘Why do cottonwoods get invited to every party? – because they’re poplar.’

That’s one of those jokes I should definitely keep to myself.

A heavy fog rolls in from the hills, and my mind returns to my thoughts on temptation. I remove the cap from my pen and reread the first line I had written.

“It seems a lifetime ago that I struggled with temptations I have now conquered.”

I continue writing.

“...but man cannot kill his spiritual enemies; he can merely lame them.

And when he is weak, they rise to former glory, thirsting for blood with their knee upon his throat. He can then fight for all he is worth, but the truth is this:

He wants to lose.

He wants to be led on by their whispers.

He wants to give in to the taste of sin one last time, not because of its evil but because it seems fine - just one last time.

And he tries to convince himself of that lie.

‘It is fine.’

All the while, his conscience yells, begging for an audience.

What solution then remains when his own will has forfeited?

When the sword remains sheathed, and the belt is no longer girded;

When the helmet is removed and the breastplate too;

What hope then remains when he will not stand and fight?”

The fog has now slowly morphed into a drizzle. The page in my notebook is too wet to continue writing. Some of the ink has spread and smudged on the paper.

I pull my hood close and slide the pen and paper into my pocket. My feet start walking home; my mind stays on that park bench. I’m reminded of a line by Friedrich Nietzsche.

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

There is undoubtedly some truth to that quote.

Great generals of the past all preferred to attack when their enemy was weakened by famine, drought, political unrest... well, all except European conquerors marching their armies into Russia at the onset of winter. Winter weakened the invaders more than the locals. Most generals sought to avoid battles in winter.

My path home leads me across the highway overpass and through a small neighborhood forest. The dropping temperatures turn raindrops into tiny snowflakes. I don’t feel the cold, though.

I wonder what moved Nietzsche to write that quote. He did not believe in the existence of a God. In fact, he vehemently rejected the idea of a creator. His worldview did not have good and evil. Society was the one to determine what values and actions were… I guess, favorable and unfavorable. What ideas must then be conquered if there is no evil, no temptation? Perhaps those which feel unbeneficial or invoke fear; perhaps those which don’t align with what one wants; are those the ones that Nietzsche must reconquer when he is weak? …too weak to enforce his own will?

I stop for a minute and gaze up at the crowns of the trees surrounding me. Those at the edge of the forest sway in the wind. As I venture deeper, the air becomes still. Branches hardly move, and it is silent.

I pull out my notebook.

“No wind, no rain – do the trees in the middle of the forest see anything but the forest? Have they ever felt the cold sting of a winter storm or the golden warmth of the setting sun?”

I walk on.

I leave the forest behind me. I pick up the pace and settle into a slow jog across the countryside. The icy wind whips around my head, trying to push me off the path.

Far to my right is a hill. A single tree adorns its rolling peak. I chuckle under my breath, “I bet that one is not a cottonwood. It’s all alone.”

Why can I never forget the bad jokes but can’t remember the good ones?

I watch that lonely tree through my frosty breath as I move past it. It bends in the wind. I imagine it dancing, dancing in the storm. Perhaps it is even rejoicing.

By the time I get home, my hands are freezing, and my jacket is covered in wet snow. I yank open the door and pull my notebook out one more time. Having escaped the weather, my mind remains fixated on that lonely tree, still standing strong.

“I bet the sunset is beautiful from atop that hill.”

'Blade Runner' - I carve up some ice on the Danube