Hoplessness Abandoned

Hope is hard to come by in a dark, despairing world. Dante's Inferno takes up the motif of a senseless, hopeless allegory for life after death with his perennial call to the damned: All Hope abandon, ye who enter here. This image staggers the imagination with the unscrupulous horrors that lay within the seven levels of Hell, and it conjures a sudden, terrible question to the forefront: what does the afterlife hold? Can there be something even more sinister that lies beyond the veil? Is there even a life after death? These inquiries grip the mind in the cold, stark fist of reality. Escaping this reality becomes even less appealing when not faced with the warm embrace of oblivion. In fact, death gains a whole different meaning when it is not final. Its finality is only as certain as the knowledge behind it, as there is no person who has come back from his passing to tell of the afterlife. What can a rational man expect from a mystery so unexplored as what lies beyond death? Here, I try and open the discussion of what hope anyone can have of the purpose, or non-purpose, of life. If one can juxtapose the argument that death is final with the argument that life is filled with endless possibility, what grabs you to believe what you know, or know what you believe? It is here that these questions are entertained, with the caveat that one has to look past knowledge and faith to find an answer to the despair of life on earth. For it is now, not after death, that one must hope the most. The truth can only be found by those who hope they can find it. Forget about the afterlife, look to the here and now before you cross into the void. Abandon all Hopelessness, ye who enter here.