HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Like so many people I know who were raised after the days of compulsory Latin in schools, I’m basically a literary and cultural illiterate who has faked his way through the situation more successfully than others.  If I speak honestly and attribute my success to a very retentive memory for periodical literature beginning with Issue No. 1 of People magazine (which began publishing when I was in college), you might accuse me of being glib (a possible failing;  at least I’m not mean or a liar), but you would be mistaken.  So, when I eventually learned the origin of the phrase “hope springs eternal” in Alexander Pope’s 1734 poem "An Essay On Man," I regarded this as significant progress.

 

I suppose hope can spring that way on certain days, but not on others.  None of those days has been on the calendar lately and I’m not forecasting any change in mood’s weather.  It’s sunny and cold outside and everything seems dreadful.  I believe I offended a friend the other day (through what was probably perceived as glibness, nothing more, and the perception was mistaken; sometimes expression is imperfect and I was trying to be light and complimentary) and I don’t greatly care.

This week is "Hamlet” week in our house and I would like to take arms against a sea of troubles.  Instead, I think I will make myself as invisible as permissible and speak little.  The other day I passed along advice not to hit “send.”  Today I say . . . say nothing.