Picturing a spring evening

It’s a warm evening in het oude centrum, Maastricht’s old center.  ‘meetings have successfully concluded, and I’ve enjoyed a good dinner with a fellow Fellow from Corporate.  The lights are coming on against the darkening twilight: it’s a quiet time or a walk around the city and a reflective think about reading and conversations before calling it a night.

  

Philosophically speaking, If we try to be a good person, can we genuinely become better, or must we always be a flawed person who believes (or worse, pretends) they are good?

 

Is hope pernicious?  Critchley advises facing hard facts with determined courage rather than soft hope. That’s a bleak outlook, though. I’d prefer pragmatic idealism, believing in success at work and intimacy in relationships, hoping for and believing in the Dream.

   

Seppala suggests that people can’t be open in social relationships without also becoming vulnerable, accepting the risk of abandonment or betrayal in exchange  for honesty and trust.  Is it also possible to say ‘you cannot hurt me’ if you are that exposed?