The end: what remains in the Jar:

The end: what remains in the Jar:

              I’ve made a choice. This is the end of the story. Like Pandora, I’ve nearly emptied my jar of evils and I too have left something inside. I won’t open the jar again. It will be for others to seek what remains if they so choose. I have already finished the story for myself.

              When Pandora opened the jar of evils given to her by Zeus, she quickly closed it. However, she was not quick enough; one evil remained: hope. We never learn if Pandora decided to release hope. Regardless, why was hope in her jar to begin with? Hope is ubiquitous and connotes positively everywhere it is found. We hope for good things for ourselves and for others and for the earth. Sure, we occasionally falter and hope for evil against others, but this cannot be the reason that hope remained in her Jar. Perhaps it was because Pandora’s hope allowed people to live with the leisurely belief that they could control the future when no god or person was above the Fates. Centuries later, Camus would write about hope and the absurd. Camus’ hope was escapist and hindered us from creating personal meaning.

We’ve visited this topic before. The hope I’ve learned these past two years is not so obstructing as Camus suggests, but is enabling. Hope cracks opens the imaginative space and allows narratives to continue after death just as Frank’s (our cadaver) body became a guide within our stories. I imagine Frank was hopeful when he donated his body—that it would lead some life after death. And it did. I don’t present a body, but a little memoir, a piece of my soul. I hope that this work will live after death, whether in curious hearts or similar tragically fated persons. Death becomes a little gift: by giving stories endings, mortality renders them independently meaningful. Were we immortal, we’d have little impetus for art or change, philosophy or growth.

The meaning of hope has changed over time. When I hope, I feel too that such hope cannot possibly become true. Hope no longer carries Pandora’s connotation of control. The hope of old has been replaced by faith and prayer. We believe that we can commune with so powerful a deity that our prayer can change the world and the future. Are we truly so special to have this power?

Idle faith has adopted the evil of Pandora’s hope; it stagnates morally good change and gives us the illusion of action. How many more school shootings, hate crimes, or targeted violence will we have to endure before we see that hope and prayers are not enough. Our problems are just that—our problems. We cannot commune with deity to bail us from our own evils.

…

              So, what is left in my Jar? Will I live for several more years? Weeks? Will the events of the future travel backward and alter my jar’s contents? Does its content depend on the observer? I’d like to think that my jar holds some sort of primordial material to build something new and meaningful.

              I hope to be eventually decomposed by fungi—for all my smallest pieces to be responsibly returned to Earth. And for those pieces to be used in making other life, just as the pieces of animal and plant created mine. That will be my afterlife: my consciousness divided among friends and family, and my physicality the earth. When my own ship of Theseus is divided among many ships in this way, does it remain the ship of Theseus? I think yes. It merely exists in a different way across larger time and space. So be kind and grateful to one another—you’ll never know who makes up another person.

              I once thought about pondering the cause of my cancer. Was it something genetic? Was I exposed to a strong carcinogen? I’ve developed some ideas, but it doesn’t matter. This story doesn’t need a rational reason; it doesn’t need a source of blame or moral justification. The story is and will be what it is.