When faced with a set of challenging circumstances, I lean towards optimism. Some would call this naïve. I call it hope, and it takes plenty of courage.
It takes much less courage to accept defeat by choosing cynicism. Giving up on yourself, your family, and your community festers in the cynical (and no more real) approach to any problem. Wallowing in mediocrity and self-inflicted misery serves to bog us in the mire. There are forces in the world that want us to stay miserable so they can pitch us silver bullets and magic potents. The deeper we sink, the more influential the myths become, and we eventually can't see hope over the horizon.
Globally, we are living in both extraordinarily good times and exceptionally tragic times. World health and poverty indexes have been improving for 30 years, but COVID-19 has taken the lives of 2.4 million people and will have lasting health implications for tens of millions more. We haven't figured a way through the pandemic, but we are struggling together, somedays with incredible grace and on other days with profound selfishness. We will find the path. We probably don't know where to look yet, and our nostalgia has most believing that the trailhead will look more like yesterday than is likely valid.
A common problem that we face – Climate Change- has its share of cynics. Both those who are cynical that it exists at all and those who are pessimistic because they believe we are irreparably screwed don't leave room for a path to a solution. My hopeful position is that we are contributing to the changing climate. What our contribution is, I am not sure. The dire predictions of our future seem unrealistic through my lens, so I aspire to see a collective shift and breakthrough that reverses the trends. My hopefulness believes that human ingenuity will help the planet restore its balance, and something we haven't imagined will arise.
I tend to lean towards hope in most situations. I can envision a better outcome and trust an as yet unimagined solution will arise. Is this willful blindness? I don't believe so. It is me courageously sharing my hope with others and trusting in its power. The lense of hope brings a new view with all manner of new opportunities, If we all express our hope, the collective view begins to shift, and a new world order will find a foothold. ( I realize and acknowledge that the new world order language will trigger many).
Do you have enough courage to express your hope?
"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all." ― Emily Dickinson
Hope can quell fear or at least hold it at bay. This week we celebrate Valentine's Day in the middle of unrest, discord, and an ongoing pandemic. We express our love and hope for love to each other in the ultimate act of hope. I love even when tomorrow is uncertain. I love when tomorrow is unknown. I have my fears, nothing like those that our health care frontline overcomes but fears nonetheless. Hope helps me rise above my uneasiness, anxiety, panic and compels me to move forward. When I fix my mind on the preferred future, it gets closer, and while not easily in reach, it begins to feel attainable.
Hope can be your first step and your second step, and by the time you take the third, you are on the journey towards your goal. The momentum that comes after the third step is usually enough to keep me running, plodding, and stumbling forward, but if I slow and come to a stop, I once again fix my eyes on the hope of a better world and take another first step.
"The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don't wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope; you will fill yourself with hope." - Barack Obama.
Make Today Remarkable, by fixing your eyes on hope,
B
About the Creator
Bob McInnis
I am therefore I ask questions. Lately, my questions have been about our survival as a species, our zealous and unrealistic quest for freedoms, and what appears to be an aversion to responsibilities.
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Hope Can Be a Struggle
As discussed last week, hope is around every corner. If we open our hearts to a hopeful perspective, it can be found, or somehow it finds us. Hope isn't a strategy, but no strategy survives without hope. Call it the 'placebo effect' or some other minimizing name but it still hope has the power to change the world. There are other forces in the world, and they can seemingly get a death grip once they get a hold of us. Disappointment, humiliation, confusion, overwhelming panic, and harmful scripts can feel like a yoke that is holding you back or down. The weight pulls us into an abyss, and it is difficult to see the horizon. In uncertain times logic has a surety. Hope doesn't appear logical; nonetheless, we have all experienced a miracle moment that didn't fit the expected outcome. Hope isn't an elixir, magic bullet, or a cure-all but rather a tendency. I imagine it as a viewpoint that helps me see a better world. It isn't a trick to use to get your way. It isn't free therapy to the blues or depression, but if we practice hope and lean towards it, even when it feels foolish, it will lift us and keep us afloat. The more practice, the higher we can rise.
By Bob McInnis5 years ago in Motivation
Rachel Reviews: The Spiral Archive by Pieter Hendrik
It's difficult for me to know where to start with a review of this book as it was, for me, an entirely unique experience and one that I'll probably never have again. I don't want that to be interpreted as unenjoyable but it has left me scratching my head a little and ruminating on its content, its themes and its characters.
By Rachel Deeming3 days ago in BookClub
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