THE DARKNESS OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS
In this life which is to end with death, the last day's coming is uncertain for all
of us. When we are infants we look forward to childhood; in childhood we look forward to
adolescence; in adolescence we look forward to being an adult in the prime of life; when
we are in our prime we look forward to middle age; in middle age we await the coming of
old age. But when we are old we expect no new age in this life. We don't know how long our
old age will last, but this we know: there is no other age to follow.
Letter 213, # 1.
One of the reasons for our sometime periods of darkness is that we expect too much. It is in our nature to seek infinity even as we are suffocated by the finite. We are limited beings created with a thirst for the unlimited. We are contingent beings who wish we could depend on no one but ourselves. We are beings destined to die who want to live forever.
Considered just by itself, this opposition between what we are now and what we want to be seems a cruel joke, but within the context of the Christian Faith this tension is shown to be the highest expression of God's love for the human being. We were created finite because that's the best God could do. Even God is limited by possibility and it is simply impossible to have a world in which two "infinite" beings exist. But it was possible to create a finite being with the potential of eventually being united with the infinite through love and to give them a thirst for the infinite which would drive them towards that goal. This is precisely what God did.
But is this not cruel? Is it not similar to creating a person without legs who has a passion to run. Is it not like creating a man without eyes who desperately wants to see? Certainly it would be cruel to given a person an intense desire that is impossible to satisfy. But that is not the case with our desire for the infinite. Though finite, our faith tells us that it is possible for each one of us someday to live a life without end in possession of the infinite good that is God. Within that context, our great expectation for possession of infinite good is not a curse but our greatest gift, a gift which drives us towards the infinite good that is God by making us dissatisfied with the limited good that we are able to achieve in this finite existence. But our tendency to have such great expectations can also be a burden. Our expectation for the joys of eternal life are warranted; our expectation for a life on earth filled with such joy is one source of the recurrent darkness in our lives. When we expect too much we can never be satisfied with the limited but fine goods that we receive.
Expectation is part of all our lives. Indeed, we seem to spend most of our life on earth agonizing over or worrying about what is coming rather than dealing with what is here present. Perhaps this is so because our times are moving so fast that our future seems more real. What is past is gone forever, perhaps healthfully forgotten or fondly remembered. Our present flashes past so quickly that there is no time to grasp it. Augustine uses the example of singing a song to make this point. In the beginning the notes exist only in anticipation. At the end the notes we have sung through time are past and live only in memory. Since the future does not yet exist and the past has already existed, the only moment existing in actuality is the present note, a note that must pass quickly for the melody to continue. What is true for the singing of a song is no less true in each of our lives and for the human history that all of our lives come together to create. (Confessions, 11.28.37)
At each of these flickering moments of our lives we have expectations. Being alive breeds optimism; it is only through experienced disasters that we become pessimistic. In our early childhood we expected everything good and waited impatiently for the amazing future that we just knew would be better than our happy present. If our first days of life had a fair portion of love and comfort (and sadly, some children do not realize even that modest expectation), we could not even imagine that there was anything bad in the days ahead. We were friends with the universe. We had to be taught the sad truth that we should not talk to strangers nor play with foreign dogs nor cross busy streets unattended. In those early days we experienced that first great gift of God: life itself. Even before we could put it into words our laughter shouted:
BY GOD I AM ALIVE AND LIFE IS GOOD!
The waters that carried our fragile existence into the future were calm and refreshing. The sun was bright and warm. We floated easily into our enlarging life unaware of the crags and crooked ways that lay ahead.
Our first years were like a repetition of the days of Eden when humans walked as friends with God and had nothing to fear and much to look forward to. Sadly, as the story of Genesis recounts, this paradise did not last. The great expectations of those first innocent human beings became unrealistic when they decided to act like gods. In wanting to be more than they could be, they became less than they should have been. In our days of infancy we escaped that terrible mistake. We had no great or unreasonable expectations. As Augustine gratefully said to God:
You gave me the benefit of desiring no more than you were prepared to give. You gave to those who nursed me the will and the means to give me the nourishment I needed. In their well-ordered love for me they gave me willingly what they had received so abundantly from you.
Confessions, 1.6.7
Unlike Adam and Eve we could not make mistakes when we first began life. We were too little to be too bad. Whatever blemishes darkened our lives were inherited from others and all too soon those defects began to show themselves. We began to expect too much from those around us. Even before we had words, we began to cry out to get our own way. As Augustine describes his own days as an infant:
Little by little I perceived where I was, and I wished to make my wants known to those who could satisfy them. Yet I could not do so and was reduced to tossing my limbs about and uttering loud sounds, making such few signs similar to my wishes as I could and in such fashion as I could. When others would not accede to my wishes, I grew angry at adults who would not subject themselves to me and angry at children who would not wait on me. I punished them by my loud wailing.
Confessions, 1.6.8.
In our days of childhood our selfishness became more conscious. Like young colts unwillingly imprisoned by halters imposed by others and led away in directions we did not choose, we were sent to school. Remarking on the trauma, Augustine wrote:
Consider the poor children who have to be driven by painful punishment to learn the letters of their trade. The fact that boys so often prefer to be whipped than to lean, shows that even the process of learning (to which they are driven by fear of punishment) is itself a punishment.
City of God, 21.14
As we entered school for the first time, our great expectation for a free and unfettered life were crushed. We had to face the reality that the world expected us to know something and to do something worthwhile with that knowledge. They cried: "Now make something of yourself", ignoring the fact that we were already someone. Remembering the trials of those early days, the ageing Augustine mused:
Who does not shudder at the thought of returning to infancy. If the choice had to be made between dying or going back to the beginning, who would not choose to die?
City of God, 21.14
If we survive childhood and enter the blooming days of youth our expectations are great. We are after all young and strong. The future seems to be in our hands. We can make of ourselves anything that we want to be. We look forward to becoming a success, finding people who will like us, or at least respect us, hoping that we will find someone somewhere who will love us, be friends with us, perhaps even share their lives with us. Of course our expectations are not without fear. We know that life is not perfect, that it is possible to fail, that it is possible to love and not be loved. Whereas as a small child we thought ourselves to be just lovely and the center of the universe, now we know better. In the midst of our search for love we may even begin to hate ourselves, to try to become what we think others may want us to be: fatter, thinner, smarter, "cooler". We find out that this is always a tragic mistake. As Adam and Eve discovered, expectations can only be fulfilled if they flow from what we truly are.
In our middle years we look ahead and perhaps begin to worry about our shortened future. There is diminished time to do what we want to do and diminished energy to fight the conflicting currents of our lives.
But at the same time we now have an established life, an accustomed way of living, an accustomed work, an accustomed love; and if we are happy with what we have achieved, we can look forward with great expectation to a retirement that gives us time to relax and enjoy the fruits of our life surrounded by those whose love for us has been proven over time.
When we are very old, our expectations become quite modest but still may be too great for the actual condition of our life. We hope that we will not have great pain or be a great pain to others. We hope to still have a loved one by our side. We hope that our passing will be with some sort of dignity. Our future is so short that there is no room for long-range expectations in this life. We are close to the death that marks the end of our time. Most of this life is in memory; our expectations are centered on the life that awaits us beyond the rising mist ahead.
These last expectations can rightfully be called great. Assuming that we have tried our best to live a decent life, assuming that we are truly contrite for the times when we did not, then the expectation of a happy life beyond death is not an unrealistic hope even when it includes everything that we sometimes unrealistically hoped for in this life.
In this life, we always seemed to be looking ahead, fearing disasters that might never come, expecting victories far beyond our capacities, desiring some quiet pool where we could find some calm. After death such rest is promised to us. Then there will be no expectation. We will be what we wanted to be, and we will never need to worry that our condition will change. Time will seem to stand still as we enjoy a placid present that is eternal.
Just now we must continue to fight against great expectations ... expectations that go far beyond the possibilities created by our condition in life. In expecting too much, we plunge ourselves into the darkness of hopes that can never be fulfilled. We become unable to enjoy what we have, those gifts given to us in the providence of God as the best way to realize the joys beyond death which now we cannot even imagine. These are the joys that Augustine tried to describe in the following words:
As we go through this life, we have a promise from our lovely Lord that if we use well the good things he has given us here, we shall receive beyond death a peace and healing grace and a final glory that goes with them. We shall have the happiness that comes in enjoying our dear ones, embracing them as we are embraced in the arms of our loving, lovely God. Best of all, we shall know that these fine gifts are everlasting, that our joy will never end.
City Of God, 22.24.