Chapter 28: Hope Is a Road Many Feet Make

The Words: Lu Xun, 1921

In 1921 Lu Xun published a short story called My Old Home. At its very end, the narrator sits in a boat, leaving the village where he grew up, and thinks about hope. In my own words, he says: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is like the roads across the earth. At first there were no roads; but when many people walk the same way, a road is made.

These lines are among the most often quoted in modern writing in Chinese. They are honest. The narrator does not pretend that hope is a solid thing we can hold. He has just seen how hard life has been for the people of his old village. Yet he does not give up on hope either. He says that hope, like a road, becomes real when people walk towards it, many of them, step after step, until there is a path where there was none.

The Life Behind the Words

Lu Xun was born in 1881 and wrote in Chinese. When he was a boy his family lost its wealth, and he came to know hardship early. As a young man he went abroad to study medicine. He later wrote that he gave up medicine for writing because he came to believe that people's minds and spirits needed healing even more than their bodies. He became one of the first great writers to write stories in the everyday spoken language, rather than in the old classical style.

My Old Home tells of a man who returns, after more than twenty years away, to the village of his childhood to move his family to a new place. He meets a friend from his boyhood, a boy from a poor family who was once lively and brave. Now the friend is worn by work and worry, and he greets the narrator with polite distance, as if they were no longer equals. The narrator is saddened. But on the boat he thinks of his young nephew and his old friend's son, who have become friends, and he hopes their lives will be new and different. Lu Xun died in 1936.

What the Words Ask of Us

Lu Xun's words ask us to stop waiting for hope to arrive from somewhere. Hope is not a gift handed down to us, nor a fact we can prove. It is something we make, together, by walking. One person walking alone makes only footprints. But when others follow, and then more, the grass is worn away and a road appears. Every kind act, every effort to improve things, is a step on such a road, even if we cannot see the road yet.

Think of Ana, sixty, who notices that the children on her street have nowhere to read after school. She starts by leaving a small box of books on her front step with a sign that says anyone may borrow them. At first few people touch it. Then a neighbour adds books, then a teacher, then a young father who builds a small wooden shelf. A year later, there is a little reading corner with chairs. No one could have said, at the start, whether this hope existed. Many feet made it real.

Similar Words From Around the World

The Daodejing, an old book of wisdom in Chinese, says in its sixty-fourth chapter that a journey of a thousand li, an old measure of distance, begins beneath one's feet. Lu Xun's road shares something with these ancient words. Both say that great things begin with small steps taken where we stand. But Lu Xun adds something of his own: the road of hope is not walked by one traveller alone. It becomes a road only when many people take those steps, one after another, in the same direction.

In chapter 20 we met a traditional saying in Swahili: haba na haba hujaza kibaba, little by little fills the measure. A kibaba is a small measure for grain. Next to Lu Xun's words, the saying adds patience. A road across a field is not made in one day. It takes many crossings, one after another, until the path is clear. Hope, too, fills up slowly. Each small step, by each of us, adds a little to the measure.

Living It Today

These words give courage to anyone who wants things to be better but feels too small to change them: a student who wants a kinder school, a worker who hopes for a friendlier workplace, a neighbour who wishes the street were cleaner and safer, an older person who wants to pass something good on to the young. You do not need to make the whole road. You only need to walk, and to invite others to walk with you.

This week, take one step on a road you hope for. Pick up litter on a path you use, start a small exchange of books or seeds, offer to help a new neighbour, or simply be the first to greet someone in a place where people rarely speak. Then do it again. You may not see the road yet, but each step makes it a little clearer for the next person. Roads of hope are made in exactly this way: by ordinary people, walking.

Chapter 29: Living in the Present Moment

The Words: Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921

In 1921 Ludwig Wittgenstein published a short and very unusual book of philosophy, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It is written as a series of numbered sentences, many of them about logic and language. But near the end, in the sentence numbered 6.4311, he writes something that anyone can feel. In my own words, he says: if we understand eternity not as time that goes on without end, but as timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

The same short passage begins by saying that death is not an event in life, because we do not live through our own death. Wittgenstein then turns our attention away from the length of life and towards its depth. We often imagine that a good life must go on and on. He suggests that the fullness we long for is not found in more and more time, but in being fully here, now. A moment truly lived is, in its own way, complete.

The Life Behind the Words

Wittgenstein was born in 1889 in Central Europe, into a very wealthy family, and wrote in German. He first studied engineering, became fascinated by questions about logic and mathematics, and went to study philosophy at a university. When the First World War began, he served as a soldier. Through those hard years he kept notebooks in which he worked on his ideas, and from them came the Tractatus, which he finished near the end of the war.

After the war, Wittgenstein gave away the large fortune he had inherited and chose a simple life. For some years he worked as a teacher in small village schools, and for a time he also worked as a gardener's helper. Later he returned to philosophy and taught at a university, where he changed his mind about many of the ideas in his first book. But the few lines about living in the present have stayed with many readers who care little about logic. He died in 1951.

What the Words Ask of Us

We spend much of our lives elsewhere: in yesterday's worries or tomorrow's plans. Even in a beautiful moment, part of the mind is already thinking about what comes next. Wittgenstein's words invite us to come back. The present is the only place where life is actually lived. If we can be fully present, even for a few minutes, we touch something that does not depend on how many years we have. This is a hopeful thought for every age, young or old.

Think of Rafael, twelve, who is helping his grandmother make bread on a rainy afternoon. At first he keeps looking at the clock, wanting to go and play a game. Then his hands sink into the soft dough, his grandmother hums an old tune, and the kitchen fills with warmth. For an hour he forgets the clock entirely. Years later, Rafael remembers that afternoon more clearly than many longer holidays. Nothing special happened. He was simply there, completely, and in his memory that hour has never really ended.

Similar Words From Around the World

More than three hundred years before Wittgenstein, Michel de Montaigne wrote in French, in his essay Of Experience, a simple line: when I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. He added that even when he walked alone in a beautiful orchard and his thoughts wandered to other things, he brought them back to the walk, the orchard and himself. Montaigne makes Wittgenstein's idea practical. Living in the present is not a mystery. It is the daily habit of being where you are and doing what you are doing.

Augustine, a writer from North Africa who wrote in Latin around the year 400, asks in the eleventh book of his Confessions: what is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I try to explain it, I do not know. This echo adds humility. Even great thinkers have found time hard to understand. We do not need to solve the puzzle of time to live well inside it. Like Augustine and Wittgenstein, we can admit how little we understand, and still give our full attention to the moment we are in.

Living It Today

Wittgenstein's words can help a busy parent, a worried student, a worker always checking messages, and an older person who feels that time is passing too fast. For the young, they say that a good life is not waiting at some future point. For the old, they say that the value of life is not measured by how many years remain. For everyone, they offer the same quiet gift: this moment, fully lived, is enough.

Today, choose one ordinary activity and do it with your whole attention: washing the dishes, walking to the shop, drinking a cup of tea, listening to someone you love. When your mind runs ahead or back, gently bring it home, as Montaigne did on his walks. Even five minutes is enough to begin. In those minutes you may feel what Wittgenstein meant: that a life lived in the present has, in its own way, no end.