Reboxing Pandora
By Dr. Sue Fisher with The Lukeion Project
Well, the first unboxing from the ancient world was not nearly so peaceful or controlled. The story of Pandora, found first in Hesiod, Works and Days 53-105, is one known to many. She was the first female, created by the gods, who let all the evils into the world. Having been given a jar from the gods (yes, the original was a jar not a box) and an unhealthy dose of curiosity to go along with it, she was expressly told not to open it. As one might expect, she didn’t last too long and soon she had pried the lid off and out flew all manner of evils into the world. The story serves as an explanation (etiology) for how hardship, devastation, and disease came into the world. But the most interesting part of the story is the end, where Pandora slams the lid back on and manages to keep hope inside.
Was it a good thing that hope was kept inside, not lost into the world? Or do we need hope out there flying around with the evils to combat them? Moreover, what was hope doing in a jar of evils in the first place?
The 5th c. B.C. Athenian playwright Aeschylus might have answered this question when he had his Prometheus, chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountains, list hope as the first thing he gave to humans, even before the fire he stole for them and for which he was paying the penalty. Prometheus’ conversation with the daughters of Ocean (chorus), who came to visit him, is very enlightening:
Prometheus: I allowed mankind to stop foreseeing doom.
Chorus: What medicine did you find for that disease?
Prometheus: I planted in them hopes that would obscure it.
Chorus: That was a worthy gift you gave to mortals.
(Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 250-253)
Taken together, in these passages the ancient Greeks explain the plight of humankind but also offer a remedy. “What medicine did you find for that disease?” the chorus asks. The remedy is hope.
So how do you foster hope when the evils of the world are flying around? You can’t just stuff them back in the jar, after all. But you can fill a jar with all manner of good things. You make a good-things jar.
It’s so easy. Get a jar (or a box), and each week write down one good thing on a slip of paper or piece of index card and plop it in there. This can be anything. You heard a funny story – write that down and put it in there. You got a new puppy. That’s a super good thing. You saw a cool bird, or went mountain biking, or got to hold a newborn baby, or hung out with a friend. Perhaps you finally learned that concept or vocabulary word or measure of music that has been elusive up until now. It may be big, like you got your braces off or got the part you wanted in the play. Or it could be small, like you found a fantastic acorn. (I love a good acorn.) It doesn’t matter. If it’s good, it’s fair game. Put the date on it if you want; it’s kind of fun later when you go back and read them to see what date it was. But if you don’t want to, no matter – it’s YOUR good-things jar. If you want to do it every day, that’s great. But do it at least once a week, so they start to build up.
As your jar starts to fill with good things, your heart will start to fill with gratitude and your hope will grow. And as your hope gets larger, the evils will diminish. This is the remedy.
American poet Emily Dickinson knew the power of hope and described it like a bird that rests in the jars of our souls. Hope is the gentle but relentless and powerful force that asks nothing of us but holds up firm in any storm. No matter the evils, hope is still the remedy.
HOPE
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the Gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I 've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
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