The Triumph of Hope over Experience – Rev. Dr. Roger Ray | June 28, 2026
According to Boswell’s biography of him, Samuel Johnson quipped, on the occasion of a friend remarrying after a very unhappy marriage, that it was a sign of the triumph of hope over experience. But really, what is the alternative? Søren Kierkegaard decided to remain unmarried, as he viewed the possibility of being both happily married and living a productive life as impossible; but near his death, he wrote in his diary, “To live without love is a mistake for which there is no recovery, either in this life or in the life to come.” Humans evolved to live in community. In fact, isolation is regarded as one of the cruelest forms of incarceration. So, in spite of our failures, love gives us reason to hope for better fortune, and so the search for “a heart of gold,” as Neil Young sang, is the most logical of human endeavors, even in our advanced years.