They seem to gobble it up like it is delicious, but probably it is just because they are hungry. I mean, how good can brown grass be? Driving home from work, tired of the grind but grateful to have a job, I can relate to these elk in late winter. Overall I like it here, my home of almost 30 years, though sometimes (especially in late winter) I start to feel a little stuck, tired. Like my options are limited, and those choices aren’t great. I need to pay the bills, so I will take what I can get.
I wonder if these elk think about their kin at lower elevations who are getting the first green grass this time of year, which is surely more nutritious and tasty. Or do they just accept the food at hand, thankful for its presence? The next day I visit my friends who live a few thousand feet lower, and this time of year it makes a big difference. There is no snow on the ground and the air has a warm sweetness to it. We gather around a campfire, comfortable in hoodies or light jackets as the twilight gives way to a glorious full moon. When it comes time to leave, I want to linger in the gentle company and the kindness of early spring. I resist returning to the snow-covered cold of the high country.
As a passionate Nordic skier, I love the snowy winters, and there are days in late February and early March that can be the best skiing of the year. There is a perfect softness to the snow and yet the sun can be so strong and warm that often I ski in just a vest. And yet, sometimes the cold, brown grass gets to me. I find myself looking around for some greener strands and I feel, what exactly? Is it hope that my grass will be green up some day soon or discontentment with the grass I have?
Recently a friend and I both revisited mythology–her with Edith Hamilton’s classic and me with Stephen Fry’s book Mythos. Despite our different journeys through the land of the gods, both of us were caught on the detail that hope, one of Nyx’s children, is left inside the container when Pandora closes the lid. There have been many variations on the details over the past centuries, but what seems accepted by all is that Zeus was angry with Prometheus for giving fire to humans. To get revenge, he gave a container to Pandora (the first woman) but told her not to open it. When she did, released into the world were many evils, including Momos (blame) Apate (deceit), Oizys (misery) Geras (old age) and Keres (violent death). Realizing what was happening, she shut the lid leaving only Elpis (hope) in the jar.
It is an interesting twist in an otherwise straightforward tale. Does hope lead to suffering, like the other things released? Or did Zeus include hope like a prize in the Cracker Jacks to soothe the human experience from all the other maladies? Zeus was pretty mad at Prometheus about the whole fire thing, so it seems unlikely he was looking to temper his curse. But at least a few of Nyx’s children embody things that are not wholly undesirable, like old age, which few yearn for but can grant wisdom and, some say, beats the alternative.
That hope was with the evils and left in the container is curious, and even today people still chew on this one. Some say hope is an evil because it discourages effort and instead entices us to rely on the boon of providence or prayer, as in, hoping for good health while eating poorly and not exercising. Another view holds that hope can hinder acceptance, even appreciation, of what you have as Epicurus says: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” It could also chain us to living perpetually in the future, as Chuck Palahniuk says in Fight Club, “Losing all hope was freedom.”
I have never seen hope this way. For me, it has always been a kind of all-purpose well wish. When contending with the world’s overwhelming dark forces and unpredictable outcomes, hope is something we can keep in our pocket, like David’s slingshot, that balances the odds somehow, and there are uncountable hope quotes that support this, like Desomond Tutu’s, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
But does hope really change anything?
To consider hope as one of the world’s evils is a twist for me, but there could be an interpretation issue. Elpis is what is left in the jar, and some historians say a more accurate translation is “anticipated outcome or expectation,” which is a different thing. I am wary of expectations because I have found that they usually lead to disappointment: how the future looks in my mind is seldom how it unfolds. I am not alone in this, and when you go strolling in the field of quotes about expectations, it seems some people feel like those flowers have thorns.
If you want to achieve, many think expectations—yours or others—can be fuel: “High expectations are the key to everything,” says Wal-Mart scion Sam Walton. If happiness is your goal, though, expectations may undermine you: “The secret to happiness is low expectations,” says billionaire investment guru Warren Buffet.
On days like today, when the sky is grey and there are no signs of spring, that tired and hungry feeling makes me wonder what my green grass is. I ponder the usual things–life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. But then I remember that I know someone who has a pair of green-grass goggles.
I have a friend who, when he gets the brown grass blues, makes a list of pros and cons about his situation. He has been in his current home and job for more than 20 years, so I imagine there have been a few lists, but so far he has ended up staying in both. He must know the human temptation to dwell on what’s not working, and by making a list he forces himself into better accounting that brings forth all the positives of his current patch of grass. This point-in-time view does not indulge a future picture we may have, born of hope or expectation. It is a right-now inventory of what is. Today, I may have brown grass, but I am sharing it with wild elk, content not knowing what tomorrow will bring.
