| It is easy to feel like we are without hope when the world around us feels so broken. It is easy to believe that being realistic means lowering our expectations for the people around us. We investigate our personal narratives and see darkness, fear, and even reasons not to believe in other people’s power. This approach can drag us off course. It can cause us to lose focus on what it would mean to thrive as a people … as a global community. It’s not unlike the world that existed in 1972. After a tumultuous decade of the 1960s, things were looking a little crazy. There were wars. Emerging ecological crises. Political upheaval, both in the United States and around the globe. Do all those things sound familiar? In that context, Viktor Frankl addressed an audience at the Toronto Youth Corps. Frankl related to the audience a lesson he had learned in his recent journey as a small engine pilot. He had been taught the importance of “crabbing,” or turning the nose of the airplane into the wind so that, even when confronted with strong crosswinds, you still align with your destination. He then used that analogy to discuss the critical nature of overestimating humanity to compensate for the strong winds of culture and life events. Frankl said, and I am paraphrasing: |
| “If we take a person as they really are, we make them worse. But if we overestimate them … if we seem to be idealists and are overestimating, overrating someone, and looking at them higher, you know what happens? We promote them to what they really can be. So, we have to be idealistic, in a way, because then we wind up as the real realists.” |
| What would it mean for you to live as a real realist? How can you help compensate for the winds of culture, and life events, and personal narratives, things that can knock everyone off course? How can you invest love and belief in those around you so that we all aim higher? |