That Thing Called Hope

What do dating apps, the news, and Albert Camus have in common? The key to finding hope in times of despair.

In 1942, Albert Camus published an essay called “The Myth of Sisyphus,” where he basically argues that life is meaningless despite humans trying to find meaning. In 2024, after seeing the hundredth dating app bio that says “Thanos was right,” I discover that some of the Internet (and also maybe Marvel) holds the position that humanity as a whole is not doing too well, so it’s probably okay to erase half of it at random. 

It’s not an unconscionable argument to make currently, honestly. Every bit of news from Gaza is horrific, and continues unimaginably to get worse. That the world has all but chosen to look away— or punish those who are speaking up —  is a fact that we’ll have to reckon with eventually. Here, at home, everyday we see vile hate under the garb of election campaigning. The days are getting unbearably hot, climate change is not a theoretical concept anymore, and we’re really screwing over the only planet we have. Basically, everywhere you look, band toh kaafi baji padi hai.

Whenever I have written about despair earlier, like in the middle of the pandemic when unprecedented became an obvious adjective to describe what was happening, I’ve tried to focus on weaselling out joy. But lately, that approach has been feeling — for the lack of a better word — selfish. How fair is it to focus on joy when so much of what’s happening feels exactly like that meme of a dog sitting at a kitchen table saying, “This is fine”?

I know that giving in to anxiety is not the answer. But surely, so isn’t delusion. If the objective is to look for an articulation of hope that acknowledges the despair, how do we do it. Is it even possible? 

An unconventional but not a wholly unconvincing place to start might be…dating apps. I know what you’re thinking — is this another essay filled with a rant about how dating apps truly, wholly suck interspersed with screenshots of people being ridiculous. No, it isn’t; I have WhatsApp chats for that. But what this is, is a reminder of something I continue to find fascinating every time I am on a dating app. 

And that is, the sheer diversity of lived experiences, likes, dislikes, preferences, mistakes, regrets that exist out there. We’re so often engrossed in building a life in the social circle of “people like us,” informed by class, caste, and religious markers identical to who we are, that we tend to forget the people that comprise the “mass out there.” Swipe on a dating app, and you see the mass bifurcating into all kinds of people. Flesh and blood folks who despite many, many differences are all putting themselves out there looking for something beyond what their life has to offer — love, marriage, or a fun date. 

The simple fact that “there are many people who exist out there” on a planet of six billion folks is not a big revelation by any measure of the adjective. But add to it a layer of possibility — that the “mass out there” is not homogeneous, that despite the apparent futility of using an algorithm to find long-term love people still do succeed — and suddenly, an inconvenience of modern life starts feeling suspiciously like a beacon of hope. 

If the core of remaining hopeful resides in our ability to remind ourselves of our vulnerability, then where else do you find more vulnerability than on a dating app? 

If that’s the core, that is. Hope as a concept has been notoriously hard to define. Smarter people than me have had a go at it, and my favourite definition, predictably enough, is by a poet. I don’t know what Emily Dickinson meant when she wrote “hope is the thing with feathers,” but I’ve always interpreted it as to mean that hope is a slippery little thing that eventually defines us as humans.

The assault on hope, more often than not, is the assault on our ability to empathise. If hearing speeches against Muslims in India doesn’t turn our blood cold — not because it affects us, but because it affects those who are not us — hope has lost its battle. If we can’t empathise with a life that doesn’t look like ours, then, what’s the point of anything anyway? 

Which brings us to our good friend, Albert Camus. In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus defines the absurd in the context of thinking through the question of suicide and by extension, the meaning of life. It’s a frequently dense essay but takes a poetic turn in the last section when Camus writes about Sisyphus. The gods have condemned Sisyphus to roll a heavy rock up a mountain from where it will roll down, and he needs to push it back again. His sins have condemned him to a futile and, crucially, meaningless existence. Because however much he tries, whatever he does, the damn rock will always roll down.

It’s this guy that Camus defines as an absurd hero with a special focus on the moment Sisyphus is walking down the mountain to do the thing which he knows will not matter anyway. Camus writes, 

“At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see, who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.”

The rock is still rolling. The brutal truth is this. You’ll close the tab you’re reading this one, look up, and the world will still objectively be terrible and we’ll still be too insignificant to do anything about it. (Unless, you know, you’re a politician reading this…) How dare hope spring up if it’s in a reality that we know will never change? 

For Camus, it’s the knowing that needs to be replaced. By imagination. In one of the most quoted parts of the essay, he writes, 

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I will stop writing this in one minute and look up and yes, the world will still objectively suck. Politicians will keep spewing venom. Children will keep dying. The forests will keep disappearing. But because we are fools who imagine a better world; we will try to counter the hate in ways we can, we will tweet and retweet solidarity, we will share stories that are not like ours, we will swat away at apathy when it hits us, we will keep writing, reading, and singing, and we will still — while living our lives fully — say, “Hey, we’re here. And we think things can be different.”

Does it sound…absurd? Yes, of course it does.

But, like Camus writes, happiness springs from the absurd. After all, one must still imagine Sisyphus swiping right. 

Untitled (Princess Street, Bombay), 1945 by SH Raza. Courtesy of Raza Foundation.

Hello, hello - I hope you’re doing well. If you’ve liked what you read, reply to this email and let me know what you think!

I’ll write again, soon.