Opening Pandora’s box

"In the story of Pandora’s box, Pandora receives a box that the gods tell her not to open under any circumstances. Curiosity and the lure of the forbidden are too much for Pandora, and she eventually opens the box, which releases all the ills and troubles of the world. At the bottom of the box, however, is hope. As often interpreted, hope is the one consolation allowed to humans for the host of troubles facing them — the one consolation we have to help us through life. In a sense, when existentialists announced the death of God, they opened a Pandora’s box, out of which flew the troubles of meaninglessness, anguish, and forlornness. But at bottom, what the existentialists offer is hope — hope that by opening the box and facing these hardships that, after all, were sitting there waiting all along, we can find a way of coping with them. For Sartre in particular, the hope at the bottom of the box is freedom."