Years ago I took one of those Strengthfinder tests and discovered this about myself. I was strongest in the two areas of future envisioning and connectivity. I may have the names for those two categories a bit off; details definitely not being my strong-suit! But I did get a sense of what kinds of things I am better suited for in carrying out my earthly purpose in life. I like to look ahead at the big picture, and I like to connect the dots from the past to the present to the future, from the private to the public (personal to the social and back again), and from diagnostic assessment to treatment/discharge plan. Past, present, future connectivity is what I do best.
I was very taken Tuesday night with the messaging put forward by America’s past President and First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama. In keeping with their own past to present bodies of work, they centered their message around the word “hope” and the key it has to unlock America’s very best potential future.
Why hope?
What is it about hope that changes the future for the better?
One of the more intriguing psychology experiments I remember reading about involved something I initially regarded as overly cruel. I still think it was a very cruel way of proving a point, but let’s at least accept the point itself. Two sets of laboratory rats were placed in separate tubs of water. Researches left one set in the water and found that in less than an hour every one of them had drowned. The other rats, however, were periodically lifted out of the water and then returned. When that happened, the second set of rats swam for over 24 hours. Not one of them died. Not because they were given a rest, but because they were given hope! Hope that, if they could just keep swimming, keep working hard, they would be okay. Hope enabled them to swim for more than 24 hours while those without hope quit working in less than 1 hour.
Well, that’s great when it comes to drowning rats, but what about human beings?
Okay, what about us?
Consider the true story of a large Children’s Hospital that had a program to help their in-patients keep up with their school work. One day a call came from this teacher in the city’s public School system about a hospitalized child in their Burn unit. The rest of her class was learning parts of speech and she didn’t want him falling too far behind in knowing nouns and adverbs. Later that day the Hospital teacher shows up to meet him and go over his lessons. The poor child was so badly burned and bandaged he could hardly pay attention, so she eventually left doubting much had been accomplished.
But something important was accomplished!
The next day a nurse on that unit asked her what she had done to that child needing help with his nouns and adverbs. “Did I do something wrong?” asked the teacher. “Oh, no,” replied the nurse. “Quite the opposite. That child was close to giving up and we were really worried about losing him. Then you came yesterday, and he almost immediately started to rally. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live.”
Two weeks later the boy admitted he had completely given up hope until the day that teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: "They wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?"
Well, what are the future implications here for the rest of us, I wonder? For those of us who don’t have to work at learning nouns and adverbs, or at swimming?
Chances are we all do have our own work at something, though. And chances are whatever work we do can and will get hard at times. Very hard! Whether we work harder or not may well connect to this critically important question: do we have hope for the future if we do work harder?
America is not the only nation on earth where work is sometimes hard, and at other times harder still. People everywhere have to work. But there is something about us Americans that makes us out-work the rest of the world at times. Something that keeps us going after others have already quit.
What is it?
What connects with America’s tendency to out-work the rest of our world in order to produce the world’s largest economy by far? If my strength of connectivity is of any real value, then here comes my own answer.
Hope.
When people have hope for a better future, they work harder in the present. Take away that hope and work stops, or slows dramatically. None of us knows for sure what the future holds. And all of us get tired of working. But if we know at least what a “better future” looks like, then we will keep working……..tired or not.
So here in America right now we are faced with two contrasting visions for a better future. One vision, labeled Project 2025, gives hope to those who are already privileged. The other vision, as put forward by the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama and those now working for their Party, gives hope to those like me who are already privileged but want the same for others as I have for myself. Yet also gives hope to those who are marginalized, discriminated against, kept out, and treated like second class citizens or worse.
Which vision are you more hopeful about? And then how hard are you willing to work to make your hope happen?
Something tells me whoever works the hardest in these next 75 days will find their hope rewarded. Because hope always works harder!
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