In my Greek Mythology class, we talked about the myth of Pandora’s Box. In actuality, the modern myth of Pandora’s Box is vastly different from the original myth. Pandora was originally created by Zeus (and other gods) as a punishment for mankind. You see, Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus, both Titans, were asked to create creatures in order to populate the earth and they were supposed to give a gift to each creature.

For example, they gave giraffes and ostriches long necks and turtles the ability to hide in shells. Prometheus was incredibly particular with his creation and spent a lot of time making it, whereas Epimetheus rushed through his creations. As a result, his brother Epimetheus used up all of the gifts by the time Prometheus finished his creation: mankind. So Prometheus decided to steal fire from the gods and gift it to man. Because of his treachery, Prometheus was punished by Zeus with the whole “tie him to a rock and have an eagle eat his liver” thing.

Zeus, however, also wanted to punish mankind. In thus, he created Pandora and gifted her to Epimetheus as a bride. Now this is where the deviation between the modern myth and the original myth occurs. Pandora was given to Epimetheus along with a dowry, with one part of her dowry being a jar — not a box — filled with “miseries for mankind.” And Pandora opened that jar not because she was curious, but because Zeus specifically created her to do it in order to get back at mankind.

Despite the deviation, one thing remained the same between both versions of the myth: the “hope” that was not released into the world. The modern myth says that “hope” stayed because Pandora managed to close the box and the classical myth says that “hope” was stuck to the lip of the jar and couldn’t be released.

The big question that my professor posed was, “Why was hope in the jar in the first place?” Hope, as we know it, isn’t a bad thing. It’s optimism for a future that we may have, and it definitely shouldn’t go along with all the pain, anguish, jealousy and other miseries that were put into the box/jar.

My professor eventually came to the conclusion that hope is, in some ways, a misery. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” Emily Dickinson once wrote, a small creature that sang a tune no matter the storm. But hope is also the feeling you have right before disappointment. You hope for something, you think optimistically about any situation that could possibly matter to you, and the second the world doesn’t answer your hopes, you are disappointed, maybe even anguished.

So, is hope really the thing with feathers or is it the thing that plucks the feathers out, one by one?

Honestly, it doesn’t matter much. Hope can go either way, building you up or breaking you down, but in the end, we need it. The way that things have been going this year, with the joke that has been this presidency, the injustice going on throughout the country, and the CLOWNS, we can easily find ourselves losing hope for this world.

But, no matter what myth you believe in, Pandora still left behind a little bit of hope for us. Misery or not, hope is something we can still hold onto and it should be something we won’t let go of anytime soon.