Reading through Letters to Olga again. The last few letters have addressed the issue of hope from a variety of angles -
1) A stubborn innate cheerfulness (something I share with him)
"I am...a bit of a die-hard...who, when he is feeling particularly miserable, can always find - Lord knows where - a new source of vitality and joy of life."
2) The whisperings of the Holy Spirit (my recognition, not his)
"I don't know exactly why, but I have a vague feeling that my future - in the long run, of course - is not as bleak as it might seem at first glance."
3) An underlying sense of being true to his mission or vocation
"One of the more frequent themes of my meditations and daydreams are the friends that have left the country. Initially, I feel a slight nostalgia and even some envy (of their artistic achievements) and a slight anxiety (they are doing what they enjoy at last, they are involved in their work, free from endless complications, no doubt viewing our toiling and moiling as pointless now, while I on the other hand am deprived of all that, without the slightest chance of working in a theater and reveling in the ideas that theater has always inspired in me). That is how such meditations begin, and they always end with a particular sensation of inner joy that I am where I should be, that I have not turned away from myself, that I have not bolted for the emergency exit, and that for all the privations, I am rid of the worst privation of all (one that I have known myself too) the feeling that I could not measure up to my task, though I may not have set it myself - at least not in this form and to this degree - but merely accepted it from the hand of fate, accident and history."
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
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