Desire and expectation. Lovely thoughts, great imaginings.
One of my favorite cartoons is a one-panel showing a guy looking relaxed, sitting with his feet up on the desk, and the caption is, “Harry’s dreaming of setting the world on fire.”
Here’s a guy with great hopes, but the joke is that he’s not doing anything. Dreaming of greatness, sitting at his desk. The greatness is all in his head.
Honestly, dreaming can be great fun. One of my favorite states of mind is that period just before falling asleep – hypnogia, it’s called. I find it entertaining and relaxing. It might allow me energy to go on to the next thing. But aside from that, it gets me nothing; it accomplishes nothing.
Hope sometimes gives us the energy to go on. There have been times when I have beseeched myself to not give up. It’s what they sing about in the lovely song by Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel, called “Don’t Give Up.”
On the face of it, it sounds like these things are all about hope.
But the key words here are “go” and “give.”
Hope to go on. Don’t give up hope.
These are verbs, action words. Hope gives us strength to go on. What I’m saying here is that hope is a tool to allow us to take action.
Just as Harry is going nowhere, sitting at this desk, dreaming of results, there is apparently a huge gap between sitting at his desk and getting to the grandeur he sees in his dreams.
Just as there is a huge gap between what we hope for and what we achieve or manifest.
Imagine dreaming of winning the lottery, but never buying a lottery ticket (given the set odds of winning the lottery, it’s not the course I would recommend for obtaining riches, by the way).
Dreams and hopes have power in that they can let us direct our actions. But without action, they are empty – except for some minor entertainment value.
The missing link is action. And here’s where it gets interesting.
Even when you have no hope, action generates results. And results generate hope.
Yes, magic happens, but the key to the magic is action.
I love this quote, attributed to the 18th century poet, Goethe:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
He’s talking about action.
Please, do have hope. Let hope give you the strength to act.
And if your hope is flagging, please, do act. The very act of acting gives one hope.
And definitely, do dream your dreams. Then take actions to manifest them.
If you want a hand with that, give me a call.