People have been known to survive for more than an hour without oxygen. Without water, humans have lived almost a week. Without food, a few have remained alive for nearly three months. Yet without hope, no one can survive. And the hope of this world depends most of all on what we demand, not of others, but of ourselves.
Bypass the Brain's tendency to focus on the negative and small.
If you had a few minutes every week to step outside your usual realm of personal concerns and tasks, how much hope could you muster for the future of life and the larger world? To hope requires a deliberate choice.
For example, it is widely assumed that there are stringent limits to human inventiveness and growth. That assumption is profoundly wrong. The only true constraint is our imagination and optimism, one person at a time. So irrational hope may not be irrational after all, it just seems that way when viewed through our false sense of limitations.
What happens when you hope more than you have to? Consider the story of Edwin Land, who ignored the teasing criticism from others when they called him " Blue Skies" for his endless hopefulness. He also refused to accept the scornfully dismissive reaction to his ideas by the highly educated people around him. From his self-taught boyhood to his first jobs as an adult, Land brought a daring and optimistic spirit to his small business pursuits.
In his pioneering of modern technology from the late 1920's onward, he was eventually second only to Edison in the number of patents he received (535). It was Land who created the first polarizers and instant cameras, high-speed X-ray film, 3D and instant movies, and military devices for aerial reconnaissance and night vision.
" In my dream, the Angel shrugged and said, " If we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination" and then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.- Brian Andreas, " Imagining World"
As co-creators, because this is who we truly are, we have the power within each and every one of us of imagining a much better world, and a much better life. The possibility of creating the world that we truly desire, begins with each and every individual. To take the time to be grateful every day for all of the beautiful gifts and blessings that have been given to us. Did you sleep in a safe and sound bed last night, with no bombs falling all around you? Are you blessed to not only eat your three meals a day, but to actually choose, and have access to whatever you would like to eat? Do you have love all around you, a spouse, children, pets who love you also in return? These are only examples of the multitude of blessings one can receive on a daily basis.
If we all focus for what we are grateful for, for all that is going well in our lives, and dare to look at what is also going well on this planet, because if we take the time to really look, to remove our tinted eyeglasses of negativity, we will find a multitude of positive experiences, and wonderful things going on in this very moment in our world. When in gratitude for all of these positive aspects, what we focus on will expand. To begin imagining and hoping irrationally, for the world we want to create, will become contagious all around us and through us.
I truly enjoyed a video that was shared on Facebook right before the elections the message that was loud and clear in this video : " You think you need love, but the truth is...love needs you!"
