"Hope is Not Blind Optimism."!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --> Hope is clarity of direction. It is belief in a positive outcome, in spite of current circumstances. It is perseverance and determination. It is a willful decision to have a glass-half-full outlook, versus a glass-half-empty. Jerome Groopman, a leading oncologist, describes it as "the elevating feeling we experience when we see-in the mind's eye-a path to a better future. It acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion." Grand aspirations and dreaming, encouraged in most of our childhood, is cynically laughed off and dismissed as blind optimism, or naivete, in adulthood. So we don't hope. We cope. We don't hope. We settle. We settle for a job that keeps us chained to a desk, in a 10'X10' cube (insert your own work situation here), enjoying stale air conditioning, never-ending bickering about what to do with this project or that, this client or that, this initiative or that. On it goes. If you've left a job, under whatever circumstances, you very likely have realized that the company goes on without you. The company may even thrive without you. All the sweat and tears that you poured into the job so tirelessly - and after your departure, things just go on. What then, is the real price we pay for giving up years of our lives in service of an employer? Sure, we get a paycheck every pay period. We get some status and sense of accomplishment, within the organization. We get comradery. We get financial security (more on why this isn't a great thing, later). In the best cases, after your departure from a job, you take away some valuable personal relationships. Even the work you've done, your great accomplishments, are absorbed into the amorphous collective that is "your employer". All your contributions belong to the company. They become "institutional knowledge". Your contributions may live on after you leave the job, but few will know, or care that they were your contributions. "STOP PEDDLING FALSE HOPE. THERE IS NO REALISTIC ALTERNATIVE TO THE STATUS QUO." Human beings have an almost inhuman ability to cope. Our coping mechanism is a saving grace, when we are placed in situations so harmful that parts of our system shut down, in order to avoid overload. Like losing consciousness when experiencing great pain. Or becoming desensitized when being exposed to a great trauma. Our bodies and minds learn to "Just Deal With It", for the time being. But coping, applied in situations where we actually DO have a way out, may be the worst skill that one could bring to bear. Coping, in situations where we able to change the situation, should not be worn like a badge of honor. In these situations, it should be reassessed, and tucked away on a shelf for when it is truly needed. A focused picture of hat we desire, combined with a searing hot focus and determination, combined with a plan, and combined with actual action, is what is truly needed.
Some define insanity as the act of continuing to do the same thing, over and over, yet expecting a different result. If your coping mechanism isn't getting you to where you want to be, then its time to stop, look in the mirror, and have a heart-to-heart with yourself. Because in this instance, your coping is a hindrance. This is a good time to ask yourself:
Trust me - I don't ace this test either. I'm not preaching. I'm asking all of us, myself included... to wake up. Let's cope with that reality. Don't Cope. Hope.Wrong approach: COPE
Right approach: HOPE
More on hope, on Wikipedia. Here's a video excerpt on hope from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption":
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