Fighting the Good Fight
Monday evening:
Ed: Your cat scan test tomorrow will be just fine, mom. Lighten up!
Tuesday afternoon:
Lisa: The cat scan shows some small nodes on mom's lung which is probably a recurrence. We'll schedule a PET scan and some IV chemo.
---
When I was in elementary school I used to do the optimist club speech contests. The one year I was successful at it, I got a free weekend in OC for the state finals on the topic Optimism: a Way of Life. I don't remember much about the speech (but many thanks to my aunt and uncle who helped me write it), but I remember the gist:
Life sucks without hope.
No one ever says "life sucks without cynicism" or "life sucks without brutal, punishing reality". No. They say "life sucks without hope".
It's easy to mislabel optimism as foolishness, fancy, simplistic, or incompetent. It is an especially easy target for those who, themselves, are afraid to hope because they are afraid of disappointment. Because, ultimately, that is the nature of hope: some thing you hope for happen, and some things you hope for do not.
Non-optimists see the hoping as the means to an end. The optimist will tell you that hope is the means and the end. Let's say you hope, and you get what you hoped for, so you don't hope anymore. Life sucks without hope. Pick up something else and hope for that.
That quest for hope, that optimism, can be a way of life. It is not a simplistic way of life. Far from it! The process is often fiercly creative. It takes some bravery because, all too often, voicing hope makes you a target of condescention or pity (or worse). It takes a great deal of internal strength to pick yourself up when a hope has been dashed and commit yourself to building a new one.
Over time, a budding optimist learns to get pretty good at hoping. Moving from the generally supernatural (gee, I hope I win the lottery) to something more practical and applicable to daily living (gee, I hope I'm able to save some money this month). The alignment of hope to the practical is, perhaps, the first and most critical step in living a goal-oriented life. Once you get good at it, you wind up dropping the "I hope" prefix altogether:
We'll be fine for money this month.
The plane flight will be fine. Don't worry about it.
Your cat scan test tomorrow will be just fine, mom. Lighten up!
But, ultimately, the thing that differentiates hope from goal is that a goal is something we accomplish through our own actions and planning. A HOPE often involves at least some elements beyond our control.
So, by all means, prepare for the worst (which translates into "you hope that when something bad happens, you will be prepared"). Lots of people are good at that. But, also, be one of those people who has an ability to prepare for the best. One day, some major hope will come through and, were one not prepared, any ensuing prosperity could be ignored in the worry of when it will end.
But, let's hope that doesn't happen.
Ed: Your cat scan test tomorrow will be just fine, mom. Lighten up!
Tuesday afternoon:
Lisa: The cat scan shows some small nodes on mom's lung which is probably a recurrence. We'll schedule a PET scan and some IV chemo.
---
When I was in elementary school I used to do the optimist club speech contests. The one year I was successful at it, I got a free weekend in OC for the state finals on the topic Optimism: a Way of Life. I don't remember much about the speech (but many thanks to my aunt and uncle who helped me write it), but I remember the gist:
No one ever says "life sucks without cynicism" or "life sucks without brutal, punishing reality". No. They say "life sucks without hope".
It's easy to mislabel optimism as foolishness, fancy, simplistic, or incompetent. It is an especially easy target for those who, themselves, are afraid to hope because they are afraid of disappointment. Because, ultimately, that is the nature of hope: some thing you hope for happen, and some things you hope for do not.
Non-optimists see the hoping as the means to an end. The optimist will tell you that hope is the means and the end. Let's say you hope, and you get what you hoped for, so you don't hope anymore. Life sucks without hope. Pick up something else and hope for that.
That quest for hope, that optimism, can be a way of life. It is not a simplistic way of life. Far from it! The process is often fiercly creative. It takes some bravery because, all too often, voicing hope makes you a target of condescention or pity (or worse). It takes a great deal of internal strength to pick yourself up when a hope has been dashed and commit yourself to building a new one.
Over time, a budding optimist learns to get pretty good at hoping. Moving from the generally supernatural (gee, I hope I win the lottery) to something more practical and applicable to daily living (gee, I hope I'm able to save some money this month). The alignment of hope to the practical is, perhaps, the first and most critical step in living a goal-oriented life. Once you get good at it, you wind up dropping the "I hope" prefix altogether:
We'll be fine for money this month.
The plane flight will be fine. Don't worry about it.
Your cat scan test tomorrow will be just fine, mom. Lighten up!
But, ultimately, the thing that differentiates hope from goal is that a goal is something we accomplish through our own actions and planning. A HOPE often involves at least some elements beyond our control.
So, by all means, prepare for the worst (which translates into "you hope that when something bad happens, you will be prepared"). Lots of people are good at that. But, also, be one of those people who has an ability to prepare for the best. One day, some major hope will come through and, were one not prepared, any ensuing prosperity could be ignored in the worry of when it will end.
But, let's hope that doesn't happen.
posted by Ed at 1:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home