The Anomaly

by Hervé Le Tellier

If you remember, Prometheus stole fire from heaven and Zeus, wanting revenge on him and all blaspheming mortals, sent Pandora to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus. Zeus slipped a gift into her belongings, a mysterious box—except it was actually a jar—and he told her she must never open it. But she was too inquisitive and disobeyed him. All the evils of mankind that had been sealed inside it were then released: old age, disease, war, famine, madness, poverty…just one evil was too slow to escape, or perhaps it was obeying Zeus’s wishes. Do you remember what that evil was?” “No. Please explain, Victor.” “That evil was Elpis, the expectation of good—hope. It’s the most destructive of all evils. It is hope that stops us being proactive and hope that prolongs people’s suffering because, as they always say and in spite of all the evidence, ‘it will all come right in the end.’ What is not meant to be cannot be…The real question we should always ask is, ‘How does it benefit me to accept a received idea?’ ”