IMMAGINI E SIMBOLI DELLA SPERANZA

What is hope and what is it made of? Answering this question is difficult because there is ‘the’ hope and there are a thousand human hopes that are expressed in a thousand forms and languages. Different people and groups place their hopes in different realities: in love, in success, in self-fulfilment, in material security, in physical or spiritual health, in happiness in this world or in eternal life. In each person there is also a particular and unique “cluster” of hopes, which coexist, overlap and may even conflict with each other, so that affirming one hope may mean sacrificing others. Furthermore, we can hope for ourselves, but also for others, with others and sometimes against others. Peoples, classes and generations also hope, finding common reasons that drive them to act, to imagine and plan for the future. So, if it is impossible to encapsulate hope in a simple, clear concept that “examines it from every angle”, it is easier to rely on the account of lived experience, on the search for the many forms that hope has taken in human history, but also on poetic expression and art. While definitions and concepts delimit and confine reality within patterns and formulas that ultimately always prove to be somewhat reductive and disappointing, narratives, symbols, images and metaphors broaden our gaze and our understanding, allowing us to glimpse many meanings and dimensions that we would otherwise be unable to see.