hope locally

Things can get better. I’m sick right now – some viral contagion, I’m sure, a cold, the flu, or something yet-unknown – but while I’m healing, I’m reading and researching. Some of these posts will be about the things I am learning. (I have a personal philosophy about life. At the end of it all, I ask, “What did you learn and how much did you love?”) I’m learning a lot!

I was just reading an article from Greater Good Magazine titled, For the New Year, Try Cultivating Hope. The article interviews Jamil Zaki, a psychologist who wrote a book (Hope for Cynics) based on research from his Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. My favorite takeaway that connects so well to my work with obLITTERate is below:  

“One critical finding from the science of hope is that you need both a will or desire for a better future, but also a path for achieving it. I worry sometimes about the young people in my life, because they seem to want to make a difference in huge global issues that are very hard to put a dent in and can make us feel helpless.

So, I often tell my students to think globally, but hope locally. Focus on parts of their lives and parts of the world where they have agency and where they can see the power of their actions making a difference. I think that’s the best way to maintain hope.”