Josef Pieper on why our incompleteness means hope

Back in the halcyon days of my childhood, each summer our family would pile into our baby-blue minivan and drive to Florida. During the entirety of the 12-hour drive, my brothers and I would go wild, arguing over who got to sit in which seat, quibbling over who was invading the sovereign territorial space already claimed by a brother, and begging our parents for gas station snacks.

This was in the days before laptops and DVD players, so our only entertainment was the books we brought, travel versions of board games, and whatever music we could listen to before the batteries in the Walkman died. The trip felt like an eternity.

I’m sure my parents felt the dilation of time into infinity at least as acutely as we did. One year, my dad got so desperate that he picked us up out of our beds and piled us into the car at 3 a.m. so we would sleep through the first half of the drive and leave him alone. He may have been starting his vacation sleep deprived but at least we weren’t driving him crazy.

Anyone familiar with road trips and children will be well aware of their favorite method of annoying their parents, which is to repeatedly ask, “Are we there yet?” Some parents get creative with their answers, some impose penalties for repeat violations, some announce a non-engagement policy with such questions, but the truthful answer, the one that makes a poor father shake his head heavy with the patrimonial burden, is “Not yet.”

Not yet. We’re still on the journey. Still stuck in this van together. We still have a ways to go. It’s a statement of incompleteness. Sometime soon we will make it to our destination and build sandcastles at the beach, but that moment have not yet arrived. For now, we’re still rolling down the endless miles of highway, suffering the depredations of pilgrimage.

Believe it or not, this is a picture of hope.

Because this year is a jubilee year dedicated to hope, I’ve been thinking a lot about this virtue recently. It’s a virtue taken for granted, probably because it’s connected with events in the future and doesn’t feel as pressing in the present moment (when we’re far more engaged in cultivating faith and trying our best to love God and neighbor).

Hope is a condition defined by waiting and possibility, making beginnings and trying new things. Hope is the language of what might be. My father driving the minivan, as he gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, hoped that we would all survive the road trip without my brothers and I injuring each other, but we weren’t making any promises.

Because of it’s incompleteness, hope is sometimes considered naive. People who dream and aspire too freely aren’t considered realistic. Safer, it seems, to live in the moment, the here and now, with both feet on the ground. After all, if you don’t take that first step you won’t stumble and fall. It’s those who hope that end with being let down and disappointed.

But hope is far more relevant than it seems. After all, why would my parents have put themselves through all the trouble of the car trip if not for the reward at the end? Why did they persevere if they didn’t have hope that the reward would be worth it?

Not only does hope keep us moving by keeping the motivating prize front-and-center in our thoughts, but it also provides the destination. Hope is the description of where we’re going. Without knowing what direction to go, how far, and why, we’ll go nowhere fast. If that means we must get out of our comfort zone and endure a few agonizing hours on the road, well, that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

We were created by God to search out greatness, to make a heroic journey, and achieve sainthood. Staying comfortable and safe at home means that journey will never happen.

This is why the theologian Josef Pieper, in his book On Hope, says the human condition is one of “being on the way.” (This is very similar to how Peguy describes hope, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.) We are travelers moving through this world in search of our eternal home in Heaven. This means that, whenever we ask in our impatience, “Are we there yet,” the answer God will invariably provide is, “Not yet.”

Pieper notes that it’s natural for us to interpret our status as travelers somewhat negatively. No one wants to feel like an incomplete project, and that there’s still work to do and miles of road to be traveled. No wants to be told that they still have sins to deal with and battles to be fought. Traveling is rewarding but tiring; the journey must be made, however. No other option exists because we aren’t there yet.

So don’t fall into the mistake of interpreting the incompleteness of the trip with negativity. Our condition of being “on the way,” is a positive one, says Pieper, because it creates possibility. We are always capable of more. We are not stuck. Progress is achievable.

Enjoy the journey and always keep the destination before your eyes. We are bound for Heaven. This means that every day of traveling brings us one day closer to our ultimate goal. Trust me, when my family and I finally made it to the beach, all the tribulations of the journey were nothing in comparison to how much fun we had there, jumping and playing in the waves.