hopeless and fearless

From When Things Fall Apart:

Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. … Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty.

I’ve felt a greater degree of fear this year than I can remember ever feeling before. As I struggle to let go of that fear, I’ve come to see that it also means letting go of hope. To fear something is to hope it won’t happen; to hope for something is to fear that it won’t happen. One cannot give up the one without giving up the other.

This reminds me of how Those who build walls are their own prisoners. Walls are hope and fear instantiated in architecture—hope that what’s on the other side will stay there, and the resulting fear that it won’t.

The Tao Te Ching says of hope and fear:

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arose from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?