Posted on 05/06/2012 10:40:53 AM PDT by big bad easter bunny
Pandora's Box Pandora's box was a poisonous gift given by gods to mankind... but let's start with the beginning.
Zeus was terribly mad when the titan Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and gave it to man. That's why he decided to punish all mankind (which, until then, had lived in a state of perpetual bliss and innocence, the Golden Age). He asked Hephaistos to make the woman, out of clay. Until then, there were no women on earth. Hephaistos made her taking as a model the beautiful goddesses, and each god gave her a quality: beauty, grace, manual dexterity, boldness, persuasion, curiosity, cunning and deceit (well, these are not exactly qualities). She was given the name Pandora (all-gifted). Then the gods gave her a mysterious box (or jar), as a wedding gift, and told her not to open it.
Prometheus, who could tell the future, refused to accept the woman. He also warned his brother, Epimetheus, about turning down Zeus' gifts. But when Epimetheus saw Pandora, he instantly fell in love with her and married her.
At that time, the proverb "curiosity killed the cat" didn't exist yet. So what would a woman do, as soon as you tell her not to do something? She'd do it, of course. So Pandora opened the box (or the jar, whatever it was), which contained, instead of real gifts, just evil and plagues. All of them flew out of Pandora's box and spread into the world: crime, poverty, pain, hunger, sickness, vice. They all looked like small, winged creatures.
Terrified, Pandora closed the lid. But the gods, feeling a little sorry for what they were about to do, had put, among the evil creatures, a good one whose task was to heal the wounds of the body and soul. This wonderful creature was Hope. When Pandora's box was opened again, Hope managed to fly away and to go around the world and heal the wounds produced by the plagues. But, as she escaped much later, she is always the last one to arrive. That's why, when people are harassed by problems, the only thing that helps them go ahead is hope.
I did not know that. Interesting. No Hope, No Cash, No Jobs BUMP!
RIP Bob, Johnny, Steve.
and Change,dont forget Change.
Cruel joke by old Zeus.
Hope is NOT a plan of action.
The ancient Greeks did not consider Hope to be good at all. Hope was an evil. People in ancient times had a hard life and they could not afford to be hopeful of anything. They needed to be pragmatic and put their trust in tangible things that they could attain. Hoping for something was no more useful to them than hoping to win the lottery jackpot today.
The Place Beyond Fear and HopeT.S. Eliot describes this better than anyone, in Four Quartets:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
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