The Optimist

Source: Simply Business Coaching

The film showed stars of varying magnitude:
On the right, Libra, and on the left, Cancer,
Mapping the brain's horizons, vanishing points
Respectively of reason and desire.
The doctors liked her cheerful attitude,
Hope being all she had in her position.

She waited, calm.  Touch burned out first, then vision.
Emotion slipped.  Last would be lungs and heart.
But, noting trends, they told her Taste was next.
She asked then, could they pick out her last dress?

She wasn't making light.  It seemed to her
That cancer just rehearsed life's attitude
That one's desires must taper to a point,
Which has position, but no magnitude.

~ Joshua Mehigan

The Optimist

Source: Simply Business Coaching

The film showed stars of varying magnitude:
On the right, Libra, and on the left, Cancer,
Mapping the brain's horizons, vanishing points
Respectively of reason and desire.
The doctors liked her cheerful attitude,
Hope being all she had in her position.

She waited, calm.  Touch burned out first, then vision.
Emotion slipped.  Last would be lungs and heart.
But, noting trends, they told her Taste was next.
She asked then, could they pick out her last dress?

She wasn't making light.  It seemed to her
That cancer just rehearsed life's attitude
That one's desires must taper to a point,
Which has position, but no magnitude.

~ Joshua Mehigan

Quote on hope

Source: fotocommunity.de

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. 

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time.
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.
If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. 

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

~ Howard Zinn

Quote on hope

Source: fotocommunity.de

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. 

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time.
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.
If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. 

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

~ Howard Zinn