Wednesday Wisdom: Optimism, Hope, and The Fragility of Ideas
March 20, 2024's Wisdom
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Optimism
🤨 Quote
“There are few accomplishments, large or small, that don't depend to some degree on the accomplisher believing in him—or herself, and the greatest accomplishments are the most likely to rely on that person being not only optimistic but unreasonably optimistic.”
Leonard Mlodinow
Source: Subliminal
Observation 🧐
With a world filled with so much pain and suffering, we need to find ways to cherish the optimistic spirit. A cynic will walk through life begrudgingly, but one with an optimistic outlook can find a way to push through the hard times, keeping an eye toward what can be.
To accomplish anything in life requires time, dedication, and belief that it can succeed. Success is literally derived from an ability to believe in the pursuit one is making.
William Patrick and John T. Cacioppo remind readers of this in their book Loneliness when they write:
“Without an optimistically biased weighing of the odds, few people would start new ventures.”
We must find ways to hold onto optimism even in the darkest of times. This often starts with finding the tiniest sliver of light. But even in the darkest of days, a flickering candle light can create enough light to guide a path forward.
🤔 Question
How do you stand against the odds and retain optimism in the face of mounting adversity? Is this ‘area specific’ or can it be applied to broader areas of one’s life?
Hope
🤨 Quote
“So why have some of us felt like jumping off tall buildings ever since we can remember, even those of us who do not struggle with clinical depression? Why have we repeatedly imagined turning the wheels of our cars into oncoming trucks?
We just do.
To me, this is very natural. It is hard here. There is the absolute hopelessness we face that everyone we love will die, even our newborn granddaughter, even as we trust and know that love will give rise to growth, miracles, and resurrection. Love and goodness and the world's beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope.”
Anne Lamott
Source: Almost Everything
Observation 🧐
As Walt Whitman explained, we each contain multitudes and those multitudes often conflict with one another. This is the emotional dilemma we all live with, each of us faced with emotions that may contradict other emotions such as the desire to both stay alive and want to drive our car into oncoming traffic.
Pretending like life is easy and ignoring the fact that it is filled with pain, suffering, and at times, the feeling of hopelessness, does nothing but bury our heads in the sand.
But reality doesn’t change, life is hard, regardless of if we want to see it.
True hope comes about not from a fantasy that everything will work out but from a hard acceptance of life’s terms while simultaneously finding something to feel hopeful towards, finding a source of light where there doesn’t seem to be one.
When we expect something to happen and it doesn’t, it is crushing. But when we see the world for how it is, and find a way to remain hopeful, we are rewarded with life’s gifts of surprise and enjoyment.
Matthew McConaughey summarized this idea well in his book Greenlights:
“A denied expectation hurts more than a denied hope, while a fulfilled hope makes us happier than a fulfilled expectation. Hope’s got a higher return on happiness and less debit on denial, it’s just not as measurable.”
We mistakenly tie ownership to expectation, but not hope. When we relinquish ownership, when we allow hope to take the role of our optimism rather than the arrogance of expectation, we are free to experience the joys of life’s treasures as they come.
🤔 Question
Are you hopeful about something in life or are you expecting it? What would life look like if you reversed those? Would it change your emotional perspective on events as you encountered them?
The Fragility of Ideas
🤨 Quote
“It is said that great ideas come to the world on the wings of a dove. And so, perhaps, if we listen closely, amid the din of empires and nations, we might hear the faint sound of beating wings, the sweet stirrings of life and hope. Someone say that such hope is carried by a nation, others by a person. But I believe quite the reverse: hope is awakened, given life, sustained, by the millions of individuals whose deeds and actions, every day, break down borders and refute the worst moments in history, to allow the truth—which is always in danger—to shine brightly, even if only fleetingly, the truth, which every individual builds for us all, created out of suffering and joy.”
Albert Camus
Source: Create Dangerously
Observation 🧐
Jony Ive, the chief designer of some of Apple’s biggest products, gave a speech at Steve Jobs’ funeral. During the speech, Ive’s described the process of nurturing ideas, especially young ideas that were not fully formed.
He stated Jobs understood what the creative process took and therefore purposely gave ideas the respect they needed, the nourishment they craved to not just survive, but eventually thrive:
“I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily just squished.”
Ideas for the most part are not provided fully formed, they’re not pretty or complete, in fact, the majority of the time, they look more like a Picasso painting than the eventual form they meet the world as.
But over time, when provided with enough guidance and nurturing, ideas can blossom.
Ideas come from all places, but more often than not, ideas are an attempt to get at the heart of something—the truth. And it is from this ability to find truth, a truth others resonate with, that ideas blossom from their fragile states into the final products they become.
🤔 Question
What idea do you currently have? What can you do to nurture it and ensure it has the ability to grow into the vision you hold for it?
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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