Today, I’d like to talk a little bit about hope. Now, I was born in 1956, at the very tail end of the so-called baby boomers. These were children that were born really from servicemen, starting in the late 1940s, 46, 47, 48, and so on.
I have an older sister, younger brothers.
So, when we went to school, we were really imbued or rather even indoctrinated with the concept of the American dream or the Canadian dream or any dream for that matter, that you could fulfill what you wanted to fulfill in your lifetime.
You could complete your mission if you really got it all together somehow and became an adult. And part of that perhaps was getting a job. That was part of it.
And of course, in my case, it was eventually getting going to university. And that was only really fortunate. Virtually no one I know other than in my immediate family went to university.
The rest of my colleagues went to work and they made extremely good money relative to what you could make in the six or eight years that you spent in school. So this concept of hope was very, very dominant.
And throughout my lifetime, I’ve always possessed this, of course. I’ve always been hopeful. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, I’ve always believed that I would somehow pull it off, whatever that meant to me.
And I have, fortunately, in my life, I consider myself an extremely lucky and fortunate man, but I am not unique. And those circumstances change, of course. They do change.
We are still basically the same people. We were, perhaps, after the Bronze Age collapse was finished, let’s say around 800, 850 BC., at the very beginning of Greece.
Greece was slowly coming into the forefront, which of course, these are our forefathers when it comes to Western civilization, the Greek culture, of course, eventually leading to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, amongst many other great philosophers.
Now, what’s happening in the modern era, however, I read, is that the newest generation is the first generation, the so-called post-millennials, generation Z, first generation, that has grown up only with technology, only with the cell phone, the
internet, the internet from the 1980s, somewhere in there, right? What does this mean?
It means that we are co-opted, in a certain sense of the word, by a digital reality, not the bugs and the bees and the ants and the nature blowing, but something that’s quite artificial.
And any young person who knows anything about the cell phone, computers, whatever it is, at 12 years old, is going to be able to access the darkest things that are imaginable on earth. They’re all there.
On the internet, everything you can think of is there. And of course, the age of comparison is also there.
So perhaps you don’t quite like your body, you’re one of those, I was one of those, didn’t quite like my body, and of course, we didn’t have a comparison. We only had the good-looking young people in the class to compare with.
But if you’re a young person now, you can go to the internet and compare yourself to about 4 billion other people, or 5 billion almost, that are accessing the internet on an ongoing basis.
And inevitably, there’s going to be someone more beautiful, more handsome than you, no question at all. Someone richer than your own family, also no question at all. And me, I’m just a very tiny little slug in all of this.
That’s how I feel. But this is, of course, one of those great tragedies, isn’t it? There may be someone better looking than me, and there may be someone richer than me, but there is no one like me, no one like me, the uniqueness of me.
And this is not just frivolous, fatuous talk. It’s the truth. And how you test this?
Realize that if you are not here, if you’re not here, if you don’t exist or didn’t exist, all the things that you could create in your reality will never be, right?
All the kindnesses, perhaps the poetry that you write, the music that you play, the relationships that you have, would never exist, and the world would be for sure a smaller place because of you.
Now, this is not what I would like to call false hope. This is the truth, the truth. And anyone who has ever said that life is short, or that life is easy, they don’t understand life, because life is very, very, very, very long.
And also, it is very, very, very hard, hard to be me. It’s very, very easy to be unhappy, to be the victim, poor me. I’m of the wrong sex, I’m of the wrong color, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong family.
I mean, gosh, the list goes on and on and on. This is analogous in my way of thinking to the weather. I’m not God, I cannot change the weather, can I?
But I can change how I feel about the weather. But of course, the weather affects me. When it’s a miserable day, I do feel miserable.
I’m cold, etc. But think to yourself. On those types of days, perhaps you have a very important appointment.
Or perhaps you’re in love with someone and they want to see you at 11 o’clock. You don’t care how much snow there’s in front of you or whether the weather is horrid. You’re going to make that appointment or see that person.
And this is the truth. So these suggestions mean that though life is hard, through effort, through work, I can overcome the diversity of my life, the difficulties of my life. And that’s the truth.
Now, we have these two concepts, hope core, which is a concept, of course, that promotes hope. It’s a good concept. There’s no question at all.
And perhaps you can watch videos that are positive and things along this nature, or hopeful, if you will. And the other side, of course, is the doom-scrolling phenomenon, that if you scroll, it’s all black. Really, it is all black.
You have to watch the news for ten seconds to know that the world is a dark place, it’s a dangerous place, and of course, then you’re thrust back into the problem that I’ve never been shot, I’ve never been stabbed, I’ve never been blown up.
I’ve never had those experiences that I’m watching in the news. So they probably don’t exist for most people, because if they did, we would not have a functioning civilization, of course, would we?
But the problem I have with Hope Corps, if I can put it that way, is not the concept, for sure, but I think there’s not enough of an edge when it comes to hope. I have to be hopeful, for sure, but I can’t be frivolous about my hope.
Yes, I want to keep hope, for sure, but I have to be careful and realize that it is still a hard, hard, hard journey to complete the beautiful me. And that’s not going to change.
All you have to do is read any biography of any ultimately successful man to himself, whatever that means. And my gosh, did they struggle. Did they struggle to finally come to their nirvana, whatever that means.
So, I think it is critical that we sit back and realize that I must look after me. So, when I wake up in a day, I can decide what kind of day is going to be, whether it’s going to be a good day or a bad day.
And I’ve often said, some days, I don’t feel good, I’ve had bad dreams, haven’t done my homework. I’m not going to artificially try to make this a good day, but I know that I have decided, I’ve decided this, what type of day is going to be here.
And then I do need a routine, a routine that I hone and I make just for me, to make me successful, whatever that is. And we all have flaws that we want to reduce.
Perhaps we sleep too long, or perhaps we don’t eat enough, we don’t go to the gym enough, we don’t have enough social contacts. I think it’s important to identify that we’re all like this virtually.
Maybe 10% of the population is not very clever, 5% brilliant, and the rest are just like you and me. We can go up, we can go down through our own efforts.
And Aristotle tells us that we have the potential to be happy, but happiness, if I could paraphrase, is a work in progress. It’s a journey. So if you think to yourself, very similar to Joseph Campbell, that life is a myth, if you will.
You come to a threshold, and you’re terrified to finally discover who you are. And many of us refuse. We refuse to go over the threshold.
But if you do, if you go and search out the adventure of your monomyth, if I could put it that way, you never know where it will go. For sure, it might go horribly bad, or it could be outrageously successful.
But that really, ultimately, is up to you and circumstance. Of course, because life is fickle. There is no question.
Life is fickle. Bad things do happen, but they usually don’t happen to me. So think about hope, but think about real hope.
And be honest with yourself. Don’t be naïve. Life is hard and life is long, but I can achieve what I want to achieve if I get to work.
Don’t play the victim. The victim’s usually on the side of the street, living at the train station, addicted to drugs and alcohol. They’re cowards, fundamentally.
Whatever the excuse. Don’t be one of those. You have a choice in your life.
Really, there’s only one of two choices. You can either be a hero or you can be a coward. It’s up to me.
It’s truly up to me. And you know what they say. You know what they say.
Critical thinking is everything, especially if you’re a realistically hopeful person, and critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care, God bless, bye bye.