Coyote Too

I wrote this for a friend who keeps stopping short of exploring her creativity, because she fears the joy will be short-lived; cut down by the mundane process of selling, lack of appreciation, inability to find those who will share her interests, or a simple lack of time. At the core, she feels it is safer to stay unfulfilled, than to experience joy that might be lost and never regained—and that is a fear that we have all experienced at one time or another. She likened it to the fear of opening Pandora's Box.

You hesitate to open the jar, because you fear that the pleasure will be fleeting, that it will not lead to new discoveries and new pleasures. But Pandora's jar did not hold all evil, and not all that was good, escaped.

"Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds." (Hesiod, Works and Days)

Hope is what keeps me going through everything else in my life, it always has. And I know that if I don't open the jar, there will be no Hope.