Giving up Hope!

'I feel a lot more relaxed...now that I've given up hope!' This was the tongue-in-cheek phrase printed on a T-shirt in a local department store. Much like the anti-motivation posters, it was taking a shot at those who are deemed 'uber-optimistic.' If you ask me, the planet could use an overdose of optimism right now. Someone suggested that perhaps giving up hope is a way to minimise the impact, when what you hope for does not come to fruition. Lowering expectations may work in some scenarios, but not when it comes to one's general outlook on life.

Because many a truth is told in jest, I'm inclined to think that whoever penned that phrase (even if was just a clever way to sell a T-shirt) probably reflected the way a lot of people feel. It's true that hope does create a certain tension. Tension however can be both positive and negative. Ed de Bono refers to positive actions as PONS (the first and last 2 letters of both words, in case some of you were wondering). I wonder whether PONS couldn't also come to mean POsitive tensioNS, much like eustress.

If the status quo is what you've settled for, with goals relinquished and dreams banished to a far flung corner of your mind, then you may well feel more relaxed. You've just resigned from the tension, albeit a POsitive tensiON, but the real issue is how long this new found bliss will last. See, I believe that most of us on the planet are hard-wired to fulfil a divine purpose, and until we come to realise that purpose, we're square pegs in a round hole. It is also because the gap is sometimes so wide between one's current reality and what they envisage, that tension runs high. Let me encourage you to let hope runs it's course and let life find a way of delivering you to your destiny.

The measure of treasure

I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation. ‘Surely God has no problem with me having pots of money; after all, the streets of heaven are paved with gold, aren’t they?’ The response to this comment got me thinking; ‘The streets are made of gold, dear friend, not because of it’s value, but because of it’s lack of value in heaven’s economy. Just like asphalt.’ In heaven, it was suggested, there were other measures of treasure. Appreciation was one of them. The difference between someone who shows appreciation for something in comparison with someone who does not is vast. Compare for example the individual who has a true appreciation for a well-cooked meal, savouring every morsel, noticing the attention to detail, the blend of spices perhaps with the person who eats a meal for the sake of it. How crude the experience that dos not fully comprehend what the experience is all about.

As we begin 2010, what will we show an appreciation for…things that satisfy only a part of who we are as human beings, or will we step up higher and develop a greater appetite for things spiritual, for things outside our 9-5 (more like 9-9) lives? How will we address our longing for something more than the next new thing, the latest craze? What will outlast the lustre of ‘our gold,’ the attraction of our newest acquisition? Perhaps a great way to start this New Year is by showing a new level of appreciation for what you have and not contempt for what you don’t. If you’re reading this, take the time to physically count your blessings. Go ahead and make a list of what’s working for you and what’s not. I’m positive that even in the direst set of circumstances, if you’re careful to count the smile of a stranger, the helping hand of a neighbour, the glad eyes of your children when you kiss them, you’re likely to come out ahead…every time.

The Art of Intent

No one starts their day out determined to be pessimistic I’m sure, but it seems that when adversity rears it’s head, most of humanity tends to switch to the default setting that hope works tirelessly to overcome. Listening to Dr. David Keane (Coaching Junction) talk about the key characteristics that successful people exhibited, it was clear that those who achieved more, were deliberate in their efforts. Most of us have a greater desire to stay positive in our approach to life…on paper that is, but when the proverbial melon hits the fan, we usually swap our own chosen reality for the reality being visited upon us.

So what then should our approach be? Intentional! While we acknowledge that intent does not always lead to action, it’s a great place to start. Someone defined success as ‘being on the path to the achievement of (a) worthwhile goal(s).’ It’s not where you’ve been, but the direction in which you’re heading that matters. Intent, when followed up with suitable action delivers the result.

For those who know me well enough, you’ll know why this next bit appealed to me. Dr. Keane suggested that being DELIBERATE meant:
• being Decisive
• Eliminating instead of accumulating-learning to live with less
• watching your Language-especially your self-talk
• monitoring how you manage Information-avoiding info overload
• knowing what your Beliefs are
• managing your Energy-physical, emotional and spiritual
• taking 100% Responsibility
• taking Action
• effectively utilising your Time
• Evaluating your plans

So change your default setting and be deliberate, be intentional about living with Hope!

An orientation of the heart

To many, hope is ethereal, other worldly nonsense that gives the weak permission to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, a world where Darwinism rules and survival of the fittest is the only rule that makes sense. Hope is often dismissed as the sentiment behind cheap cliches and bumper stickers that give people room for pie-in-the-sky ideologies and farfetched schemes. To the careful discerner though, hope is anything but cliche-ish, anything but fluffy and insubstantial.

Hope is the gutsy, steely tenacity that gives one the strength to embrace the worst as if it were a passing breeze, the presence of mind to stare whatever evil it is they face eyeball to eyeball and be defiant enough to know they're not going down...not today!! Hope is anything but wishy-washy, airy-fairy, fluffy! Hope is to be credited for tyranical regimes overthrown, oppresive behaviours resisted, and for the flag of true justice flying no longer at half-mast.

In his moving work 'Not Deterred,' Paxus Calta-Star tells us about the 18 year-old student Polina, who no doubt compelled by hope, protested for a more just Bulgaria.27years in prison did not quell the hope-filled dreams of one Nelson Mandela to achieve democracy for a nation plagued with the disease of apartheid. To take it s step further, activist Vaclav Havel has said 'hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.

Anticipation

It's been almost a month since I've blogged, not because I haven't thought of things to say, but largely because life has been playing at a speed I clearly have not kept up with.Winter brings the opportunity to cuddle up with a cup of hot cocoa and a great book on a blustery afternoon and feel like everything's okay with the world; the bleary days also however has an awful way of sapping your energy in a way that even the most severe summer can't.For the first time, perhaps in my adult life, I complained about the season I love, and then the more I thought about winter, the more I anticipated spring. The idea of new life, of gray clouds and slush giving way to blue skies and greenshoots gives me the requisite dose of energy to keep my eyes open and feet walking.

Years ago, I commented to my mentor that he made becoming a man such an anticipated thing! Looking ahead to something or someone that has penetrated through the mire we sometimes find ourselves wading through, gives us hope that we'll get there...eventually! I recall how I waited for the cry that would signal that my son was born, that new life had come, and even now I can feel the anticipation my heart experienced then. Now I find myself wondering what both his life and his sister's will be like in ten and twenty years, what dreams they will follow, what passions they will discover, and I anticipate again. The gray of yesterday passes swiftly when the radiance of tomorrow shines on my horizon...and once more...I anticipate!

Abiding Realities

‘Life is characterised by ambiguity,’ the teacher told the students before asking them whether they agreed or not. One bright spark thought up the perfect response. ‘Yes…and no,’ he said. Doesn’t it seem though that life has an uncomfortable degree of ambivalence because while our confidence surges when exposed to random acts of kindness where we’re least likely to find it, humankind can sometimes stoop to lows unimagined. So we remain uncertain of whether the world as our global village will ever come to the place where people can live as close to Utopia as possible. Sometimes we feel like just as we’ve discovered one solution, a new problem arises to sap our strength. What we need to stabilise our dreams, fuel our highest aspirations for a humanity that connects with each other despite our differences, is a daily injection of hope.

The bible talks about hope, together with faith and love as abiding realities. In reference to time, the word for our English word ‘abiding’ is ‘me-no`,’ meaning to ‘continue to be, not to perish, to last, endure.’ So much in our world today threatens the prospect of hope lasting, enduring. So much in our world today resists the idea of hope flourishing…but hope, like faith and love is an abiding reality destined to ‘not perish,’ rising another day so that it can ‘continue to be.’ Nothing then, no matter how obstinate, no matter how unrelenting will remove hope from our sights and fill our hearts with apprehension. A generation consumed with hope will soon overthrow fear’s dark days and live to tell another generation of how hope championed our cause.

A child's eyes

I watched with pride-filled eyes, as only a doting father can as my son pulled away from the starting block at swimming. I looked around at other parents and, predictably, they all had exactly the same look in their eye. It is one of life’s truest things that there is one most beautiful, bright and blessed child in the world and every mother has that child. Nothing portrays more than a child whose heart has not been tainted with our folly, whose mind has remained untangled by the complexities of our contemporary society.

More than one author has penned words expressing the notion that when God wants to do something beautiful in the world, he moves not through clever politicians, provocative philosophers or religious gurus, but through mothers, who after bearing seed, wait…with hope. The world’s greatest tragedy therefore must be gazing into the eyes of a child who reflects no promise of tomorrow, whose window to their soul is darkened by the shadows of a life fraught with difficulty and pain.

Citizens of the world must, in response, unite to march hope right back into the lives of those who stand to gain the most from a renewed sense of hope. May our words bear the cadence of a loving God restoring hope in what many feel is a hopeless world. An activist once told the story of a weekend away with his son, after feeling that their father-son relationship had deteriorated into a monologue made necessary by exchanging only the most basic information. In an unusual burst of expression, the young man let his father know in no uncertain terms that he felt ‘bummed out’ by his father’s worldview. With his incessant ranting about the world’s ills, he unwittingly crafted a world with no prospects, no hope for future generations. Let’s endeavour to fight despair, never dimming the light in our child’s eyes, never dulling the hope that helps life make sense.