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Tag: hope

  • Theme:

    dizzyness of freedom

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    1–2 minutes

    The “dizziness of freedom” produces anxiety, according to Kirkegaard.

    When you can do anything, you open access to a surplus of choices, “the possibility of possibility,” from which uncertainty blossoms: which decision will lead to happiness?

    Kierkegaard says empowerment comes from ownership (taking responsibility) and making a choice: to restrict your “freedom” by choosing frees you from anxiety. This can be called a “leap of faith,” when you realize that more pondering of the problem is a problem to decide and act creates relief.

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    Pessimism promotes optimism

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    1–2 minutes

    Any movement forces you to encounter the world and incur risk, which is to see the world as a trap. However, to remain still is to rot internally.

    Knowing one outcome is always negative (standing still) means any movement has a better chance of success, and thus you are propelled from pessimism into optimism.

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    The benefit of misinterpretation

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    1–2 minutes

    Incorrectly translated, the Chinese word for "crisis" is "opportunity." (It is closer to "danger" + "change point.")

    However, the trope becomes a truism because it dismisses our cultural stigma around failure and disaster as debilitation and reorients us toward the possibility of hopeful growth.

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    If it can happen, it will

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    1–2 minutes

    Yet, a repeated negative (seemingly out of your control) continually assails you, and you try to grow from it, but the grit of the stoics has not yet manifested as resilience.
    As an intermediate phase, you can riff away from the negativity of Murphy’s law "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong" and into "If it can happen, it will."
    This seeming pessimism is the reverse: focusing on all events allows a burst of glee when the good thing happens, a resigned affirmation when it doesn’t, but a more realistic and probabilistic view of how balanced your life is.

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    Passion relies on possibility

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    1–2 minutes

    There is only passion (and argument) when a situation is unsettled.
    If thoroughly confirmed and believed, the situation enters the state of fact: an operating condition of reality, not a possibility or hope.

  • Theme:

    The good boy

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    1–2 minutes

    Being a ‘good little boy’ keeps us in place, acquiescent to authority. But my little boy is also the one throwing a tantrum at injustice and unfairness.
    My little boy is a sensitive optimist overridden by a scared man. Sometimes, I need to forgive the man and allow him to become the child.

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    The fundamental contradiction

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    1–2 minutes

    We want people to change so the world will be better and easier. Yet we seldom follow the adage: “In order to change the world, you must first change yourself.”

    In the only realm we could possibly hope to have influence or a modicum of control, we do nothing, yet we continue to cry out for change.