'Cuz That What Dreams Are Made Of

I've been struggling of late. Can't get my head into any kind of productive space. Much of that is the new no-nap, ten-straight-hours regime of LivCare these days, but nearly as much is the result of unrest and chaos in my heart and mind. In such times, I turn to comfort foods.

I watch Scrubs. I re-read Harry Potter.

The latter I am up to right now, book six. I've read them all a number of times, and even wrote a grad school paper on literary dialect in the series. Just came upon a point in book six that interested me.

At then end of book five, Harry hears a prophecy about him and Voldemort that says "Neither can live while the other survives..." Rumors about the prophecy spread, leading the wizard media to brand Potter "The Chosen One."

What I am finding interesting is the unmitigated optimism of such a move, and how really very likely a move it seems. News leaks that Harry and a famous evil wizard cannot both survive, and it is interpreted to mean that Harry has been Chosen to rid the world of the evil. Yet, that is not at all what the prophecy says. There is no promise of a happy ending. The inevitability of a happy ending is the lens through which the news is interpreted.

And damned if that isn't one of the smart little things that Rowling slips into her books. Much is made of her being a single parent, but she was also an accomplished university student in her time, and I stick with the series because it betrays a wisdom behind it.

We are conditioned to believe, to hope. It is reflexive. One of two who must die becomes The Chosen One because it has to. Good must win. We assume eventual success on the part of good because we have to. These aren't mere illusions to hold on to, but the bedrock of the impetus forward through each bone-crushing, soul-deadening day we encounter.

We don't believe the best because we want to, but because we have to. It has to be reflex because it defies sense, and it has to exist at all so that we can live, can continue.

And we kinda know it. It is the fallibility, the intellectual decrepitude that writers like Rowling and Vonnegut refuse to deride or disavow, and instead celebrate. Silly as it may seem in an intellectual moment.

Hope makes us human. Lack of hope makes us dead.