HOPE HEALS? OR JUST WOO WOO

Hope heals the hopeless.

I’m glad if it’s true. (pssst, it’s true.)

But who are these hopeless people?

Do you know one?

This blog is big fountain of hope bubbling over three thousand posts.

With that, there is a lack of traffic for hope posts in a media environment of ‘if it bleeds it leads.’

Doom scrollers need to see every horrible thing that happens to people on the front page of Yahoo and Newsbreak.com.

It passes as news, or entertainment, until you make an appearance on the doom scroll with something unfortunate.

Then it’s the worst thing in the world and you reach out and warn everyone you know how bad it is. With authority.

If that checks out for you, then you know hope heals.

By posting pictures of your arm cut open, your bandaged face, or sprained ankle from hell, you show vulnerability.

You’re saying, “I hope this doesn’t last,” and it doesn’t.

Now your online audience feels your hope, and it becomes their hope, too.

Thoughts and prayers? As many as you’ve got.

Hope Heals, Says So Right Here:

I’m not a counselor, but I read stuff. And I’ve been to counseling.

Turns out counselors don’t like patient advice on how to do their job.

I wish I’d known that going in. I had hopes for a good outcome and explained to my counselor what needed to happen for that to occur.

Which is one of the reasons I was in there to begin with.

If I was a counselor?

The most intriguing piece of advice I ever received as a counselor in training came from one of my favorite professors. He told me, “In the very first session always give them a little magic.” Now that’s an interesting choice of words.

The more I thought about the concept, the more the idea excited me. Magic messes with your head. It messes with the impossible by making it appear possible. When in crisis, despair, struggling with insurmountable problems or even the daunting task of navigating or creating change in our self or a life situation, a little magic could go a long way.

So I will let you in on a little secret. The magic that he was talking about, the magic we all need in our lives is actually not so magical at all. It is something much more powerful than magic and it is quite real.  It is the power and science of hope.

It’s the voice of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation that either whispers or shouts –anything is possible.

Just ask Kevin Garnett. He’ll tell you.

Anything Is Possible?

Is magic a woo woo like hope? Do you know a magic trick?

Can you do magic that impresses you?

Here’s the magic that impresses me today, yesterday; I’ll be impressed as hell tomorrow, too:

I’m impressed by my children. There, I said it. My kids impress me no end. It feels like magic.

And they don’t really try to impress anyone, especially me. Since they don’t read my blog, I can say things about them.

They are finishers, starting with high school, then college. Smart kids. They take after their mother, without the drama. (Hi, honey.)

Not only finishers, they are starters.

Quick question: When did your ‘Real life’ start?

For me it was getting married. Not my first apartment, joining the Army, first real job, but getting married.

Get married and there’s more than one life on the schedule.

Am I safe and sound? Why wouldn’t I be. I don’t need checking in on.

Is she safe and sound? I’d better check in on her.

Add another life, then another, and the realization dawns on you:

Your hope heals them while you ponder their future.

And they grow up and find partners and add life to good life and work together making it better.

Ask me again how kids are magical.

Sound Mind, Sound Body, Sounder Millennials

Math explains the idea of ‘middle’ as in ‘middle-aged.’

In a lifespan of eighty years old, forty is middle-aged.

But that’s not the lifespan, so middle-age starts earlier.

How early?

This is where the magic of hope happens.

My hope is for my kids and their generation to recognize the dog and pony show of short-term grandstanding by men and women who degrade their intelligence with with incredulous crap.

No, you won’t lose thirty pounds in a week. Unless you chop off a leg. Don’t do that.

You won’t learn more in a three minute video than you did in college. You can say you did, but don’t.

And the big hope for healing: Resist shit-talking and shit-posting with strangers on topics you know better than them.

They have goals different than yours. Their’s are based on the words of disgraced sacks of shit headed for the landfill.

A common refrain: “Hope in one hand? Show me.”

Their hope is not your hope. For that to happen you need to be hopeless and looking for a ‘last resort.’

You need to believe that a direct order that must be obeyed comes from a pay grade way, way, way, beyond yours, from a public speaking platform.

That fervent belief needs to turn to action, and away the crowd went on Jan. 6.

For many, many days in the future for you, your neighbors, your kids, your kids’ kids, ignore the sound of one ass clapping in the wind.

Vote Blue, be true to yourself and your goals.

Make it a good day for everyone:

Spread hope.

We veterans of millennial parenting can already hear the whine:

“What does it eeeeven MEEEEEEEEEan?”

It means vote blue kid, vote democrat, and toss those sacks in the garbage truck on Election Day.

Tell your friends.