Hopeful.

van Gogh, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gaugin (detail), 1888

Our life is a pilgrim's progress. I once saw a very beautiful picture, it was a landscape at evening. In the distance on the right hand side a row of hills appearing blue in the evening mist. Above those hills the splendour of the sunset, the grey clouds with their linings of silver and gold and purple. The landscape is a plain or heath covered with grass and heather, here and there the white stem of a birch tree and its yellow leaves, for it was in Autumn. Through the landscape a road leads to a high mountain far far away, on the top of that mountain a city whereon the setting sun casts a glory. On the road walks a pilgrim, staff in hand. He has been walking for a good long while already and he is very tired. And now he meets a woman, a figure in black that makes one think of St Paul's word, "As being sorrowful yet always rejoicing."  That Angel of God has been placed there to encourage the pilgrims and to answer their questions:

And the pilgrim asks her:    Does the road go uphill then all the way?

and the answer is              “Yes to the very end”─

and he asks again:     And will the journey take all day long?

and the answer is:             “From morn till night my friend”.

And the pilgrim goes on sorrowful yet always rejoicing – sorrowful because it is so far off and the road so long. Hopeful as he looks up to the eternal city far away, resplendent in the evening glow.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to his brother, Theo, Friday, 3 November 1876