Story #11 [Hope, Trust and Love]: The Story of Pandora’s Box

There is perhaps a less well known tale that better illustrate how the golden strands of trust, love and hope intertwine and weave together — and that is the story of Pandora’s Box.

It is unfortunate that people often refer to Pandora’s Box in the context of something bad, to denote the opening of a latent topic or hidden issue that should not be referred.

That, is not the story in its entirety.

That, is not the story of Pandora’s Box.

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The story of Pandora’s Box begins after Prometheus stole the gift of fire from heavens to give to mankind (see previous post here).

Zeus was so furious he was determined to impose further punishment on mankind to extract revenge for his loss. (Note: This is a key point of difference between Greek gods vs the deities from other religions. The gods in Greek mythology are attributed with more petty human emotions and actions.)

So Zeus asked Hephaestus to create a woman out of clay and asked each of the gods to give her a gift. Aphrodite gave her the gift of grace and beauty. Athena blessed her with gift of needlework. Hermes then gave her the gift of voice. The final product, our main character, was a woman was named Pandora, meaning “all gifted” or “all giving”.

Pandora was then offered by Zeus to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus, as his wife. Epimetheus ignored the warnings of Prometheus and accepted her as his wife. As Pandora’s wedding dowry, Zeus gave her a jar (which was later mistakenly translated as a box) and strictly cautioned her to never open it. (Doesn’t this sound familiar with the biblical tale of Eve and the apple of Eden? Sigh…)

So the days flew by and the couple lived happily together until the day that Pandora become curious about jar from Zeus. She wondered about the possible wonders that would be inside the jar until finally, she could resist temptation no longer and opened it.

Lo and behold, the jar had actually contained all the evils of mankind — jealousy, anger, old age, deceit, plagues of illness etc. And upon the opening of the jar, all the evil flew out and that is the Greek explanation of why there are many evils in the world.

BUT the story does not end here.

It is said that Pandora upon seeing the horrors she had unwittingly unleashed on the world, frantically tried to close the lid. Although it was already too late to stop most, she did manage to stop the very last one — and that one was the loss of Hope.

So the story of Pandora’s Box is really one of redemption — because despite all the evils and woes that could befall us, we still have hope to sustain us. This is also why I consider hope to be the most important thing to have.