Tag: pessimism

Blogpost

It’s All Bull$#%t Until It’s Not

Pete Huryk

A good friend of mine had a great night tonight. He is a high school basketball coach in Iowa and they won their first game of the season. The victory is more impressive because they did not win a single game last season. As I’ve known this man for many years, I know that he has been selling an idea to his team for months. The idea that they are better than their record from last year. I am sure that he has been trying to convince his players that they could win. While I like to believe that everyone is as optimistic as I am, there were probably a few of his players that believed he was full of it. The truth is that he was, up until tonight.

Magellan, Galileo, Tesla, the Wright Brothers and yes! John Windham were all kidding themselves at one point. At least that is what the people around them tend to believe. The reason is that it is easier to be pessimistic. It takes almost no effort at all to see the obstacles. The struggle of believing is just too hard for many people to bear. We’ve become enamored with the ideas of predictability and consistency. As we go through our lives, the monkey wrenches that get thrown into the gears of our perfectly planned days cause major upsets and anxiety. Everything is supposed to work like Starbucks where things are predictable but make you feel special at the same time. Believing something into existence is just too much work! What if I fail!?!?!? What if I’m full of it?!?!?! You will and you are. The people above were all branded fools up until and often beyond their successes.

If it’s all bull$#%t until it’s not, then what are you willing to be mocked for? The pessimists are always going to be there, no matter what. So the key is believing in something more than you care about what people will say. Time and tenacity are all it takes to change the impossible to the possible. Now is your time!

Pete

Blogpost

The Vision We’ll Need

Pete Huryk

Salto MortaleIt’s actually quite amazing when you think about it.  The fact that pessimism can even exist in a world where we have achieved so much.  The internet, space travel, self-driving cars and a myriad of other examples should really give us hope that anything is possible.  In a short span of time, we’ve gone from living a relatively meager existence to bending the world to a place of our own design.  I recognize fully that not all of the progress come without cost.  However even the problems that we have created are well within our scope to solve.  The problem is one of vision.

In many ways we hang onto the ways of our ancestors.  Some of those traditions and habits have value that justifies their persistence.  However there are many that are anchors to our progress: both personally and societally.  The one in particular that I am thinking of at the moment is our vision.

The phrase “I’ll believe it when I see it” seems to encapsulate the way that many people, with whom I deal daily, view the world.  Their belief, effort, support, etc. are completely dependent on proof positive before they will take the leap.  Unfortunately that level of conservatism will only ever produce the same results to which we are accustomed.  The realm of possibility encompasses far more than we can imagine.  So in order to get where we truly want to go, “I’ll see it when I believe it” is the mantra of the day.  This may seem like semantic double talk but it truly is the way forward.  Human beings lead with belief.  Too many of us are being held back by our need for the world to give us proof before we are willing to leap.  Absolutely!  Put on a helmet if necessary!  But most of us are not afraid of the moon shots, we’re afraid to be disappointed, to try, to give everything we’ve got!  The unfortunate thing about this is that although we’re not dead, we’re not fully alive either.  We live in a time when anything is possible but exist day to day only in what is probable.  Our vision for the future should not look exactly like the past.

Pete

“What’s he doing?” – Trinity

“He’s beginning to believe.” – Morpheus

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