Imagine with me, if you will, lying on a sunny beach, lazily counting your lottery winnings. Finding yourself free of debt, worry, and fear. Waking up to a world free of war and disease. Seeing yourself dancing with your one true love. Imagine yourself wherever and however you ultimately wish.
Now imagine someone approaching you with a pin and popping that bubble, watching the drops of your dream splash and roll down the sides, as they wave their expertly crafted and highly detailed forensic analysis about just why what you’re dreaming isn’t or can’t be possible.
Some people are like that.
“I’m just pragmatic,” they’ll tell you. Or, “I’m just being realistic.”
Takes the air right out of your sails, doesn’t it?
Some people see and feel things over the course of their lifetime that they can’t quite understand. Some people have experiences they simply cannot explain, experience ‘coincidences’ that appear all but impossible, and some even experience miracles.
Some people embrace these things, while others deny and push them away, deciding there’s no room for speculation, for spirituality, no room for anything that’s not dated, stamped, and bona fide.
Imagine if we were all like that. Imagine denying the possibility of divine intervention to the couple with the newborn baby in the NICU. Imagine telling that wife, sitting at her dying husband’s bedside, that there’s absolutely no hope. Imagine telling the child, who’s been in foster care for the past five years, that she’ll never be adopted.
Imagine that. Because you’re just being realistic. What kind of world is that?
No matter your belief system, which I don’t wish to call into question, most people must have a small reservoir of hope inside them somewhere, if only just to aid in survival, don’t they? I mean, shouldn’t they? In times of famine, or when there weren’t very many animals to club, didn’t someone hold out the hope of food? Did they ever look to the heavens – for inspiration, for guidance? Didn’t they once call on, or out to, a higher power? At some point, people had to willingly suspend their disbelief in order to stay alive.
Call it part of the collective unconscious, or the enduring human spirit, but is this not part of being human?
There’s nothing worse than clashing with another person over beliefs. It’s uncomfortable, it’s unpleasant, and discussions usually leave a taste of dissatisfaction on the lips of both parties. It can be a downright deal breaker. Both almost always walk away defeated, knowing that there will probably never exist a middle ground.
An interesting example of this juxtaposition can be found here, in this NBC News report about the power of prayer that aired a few weeks ago, ironically, right around Christmas.
http://player.theplatform.com/p/2E2eJC/nbcNewsOffsite?guid=nn_cyn_power_prayer_141223
What do you think? Whose team are you on? People defy odds every day, don’t they? What is the role of your own belief system?
Moreover, when someone tells you not to have hope, your dream’s never going to come true, or your aspirations are too lofty, do you stop dreaming? When a loved one is sick and the prognosis is bleak, do you just head home, crack open a beer, and say, ‘Oh, well. Win some, lose some’?
You don’t. You fight. You fight for what you need, you fight for what you believe, you fight for the best possible outcome.
So, if anyone ever approaches you with a pin, trying to pop that balloon that you’re holding, you just set it higher and clutch it even tighter.
Look at them and say, in the words of the great Stevie Wonder, This is mine. You can’t take it.
And then you hold onto it for dear life.
