LIVING WITH HOPE

What is hell? A physical place? Hell is the name we assign to one of the most terrifying feelings: hopelessness. Hope may seem irrational, but if we do without it, the universe leads to absurdity. To love is an act of hope, for love dreams of conquering death. Loving is the way we approach that mystery we call God or transcendence.

We deny God because we only believe in what we can perceive. However, our knowledge of things is limited. We will never have direct access to the first cause of the universe or its meaning. Skepticism attributes to man the monopoly of knowledge, ignoring that ultimate truths can only be glimpsed through inner experience. Poets, who feed off their inner life, are more reliable than scientists, who have an increasingly narrow view of the world.

Science can unravel the secrets of biology or physics, but it can never explain to us the meaning, origin, and purpose of life. Caravaggio understood the mystery of existence better than Einstein. What is essential, as Exupéry said, is never a visible evidence, but an intuition that can only be experienced through the heart.