With hope, we are half way to where we want to go

The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them tothe impossible

~ Arthur C. Clarke

Hope springs eternal. Hope is the emotional state, which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. It is a feeling: the feeling that the feeling you have is not permanent; the feeling that what is wanted is possible; that events will turn out for the best; the act of looking forward to, with desire and reasonable confidence; that something desired may happen.

Hope comes into play when our circumstances are dire, when things are not going well, or at least there is considerable uncertainty about how things will turn out.

The opposite of hope is despair and one must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes. Hope removes the blinders of fear and despair and allows us to see the big picture, allowing us to become creative and have belief in a better future.

Hope is an essential and fundamental element of life, so essential indeed, that, like faith and love, it can itself designate the essence of human life.

Without hope, we will be lost. “Lost without hope in a world of despair, I see life going by and no end in sight” is the lament of many people who become miserable for want of hope. These are people who have lost the hope, to hope for; persons for whom misery is endless and perhaps the only thing known to them in life. But it need not be so. Hope is something that can be easily cultivated. Even in hopeless situations, we should learn to hold on to hope.

As William Shakespeare would say, “The miserable have no other medicine but only hope”; and, “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings”. As long as we have hope, we have direction, the energy to move, and the map to move by.

Alternatives

We have a hundred alternatives; a thousand paths; and, an infinity of dreams. Hopeful, we are halfway to where we want to go; hopeless, we are lost forever.

There are many things to hope for - look forward to – to happen in Sri Lanka. Primary amongst them is that we all will consider ourselves as Sri Lankans, and forge an identity that is truly Sri Lankan. We have all the basic ingredients that should make for an interesting national distinctiveness – a gamut of cultures, friendly people, a mix of mouth-watering cuisine, a range of attires, presence of adherents of all major religions of the world, and many more. However, intolerance; ignorance; and, more importantly, politicians tend to delay this process.

Whilst the first two characteristics are individualistic in nature, and therefore could be overcome by the person concerned; the latter is an external element that has been introduced for the benefit of the self – the selfish, self-seeking, and self-serving-interest of the politician himself. Irrespective of race, creed, and caste, they are found in all parts of the country and come from all the mentioned denominations.

Many cast their vote in ignorance of the real motives of some politicians, and with the same selfish, self-seeking, and self-serving hope for some kind of personal gain in return. Some do so because of kith and kinship.

While most do so simply because they like to feel responsible even if they are not knowledgeable. None thinks it wise to wonder why a person needs to invest so much wealth - begged, borrowed, or ill gotten - to convince us of his intentions, when the way a person leads his life is sufficient proof of his or her motives.

If ostentation, greed, egotism, and duplicity, is the way a person leads his life, we ought to know that such persons are never fit to serve the people. Yet, time and again, we see that such persons are elected as our representatives. Is it because we ourselves are a little like that; or is it because we do not know how to balance the power of the vote with responsibility in casting it?

This brings us to the question of ‘ethical decision making’. At the core of all decision-making is the need to balance power - in this instance the power of our vote - with responsibility. However, this process is not as simple as it seems.

Wisdom

It requires wisdom. The concept of wisdom can provide invaluable insights into how to achieve the most effective balance between power and responsibility, which is central to what our values mean in practice, as well as how we incorporate ethics into our decision making.

In this context, I wish to quote Dr Bruce Lloyd, Emeritus Professor of Strategic Management, London South Bank University: “Wise decision-making also, inevitably, involves moral/ethical choices and this occurs every time we take a decision. Hence, it is not surprising that we find that the comments we might define as wisdom are essentially comments about the relationship between people, or their relationship with society, and the universe as a whole. "

These statements are generally, globally, recognised as relatively timeless and they are insights that help us provide meaning to the world about us. In theory, the use of teams, committees, even opinion polls (and other efforts to capture The wisdom of Crowds) are attempts to capture collective wisdom. But what certainly surprised me when I started looking at this subject, was the paradoxical gap between how critically important this area was in all our lives, and yet how often it seems to be almost totally ignored in Futurist, Strategy, Knowledge Management, and even Ethics, literature.

Paradox

Another paradox is that we appear to be spending more and more time focusing on learning knowledge, or facts, that have a relatively short shelf life, and less and less time on knowledge that overlaps with wisdom, that has a long shelf life. Why is that? What can we do about it?”

He goes on to say: “While power is the ability to make things happen, Responsibility is driven by attempting to answer the question: ‘In whose interest is the power being used?’ Yet the two concepts of power and responsibility are simply different sides of the same coin; they are the Ying and Yang of our behaviour; they are how we balance our relations with ourselves with the interests of others, which is at the core of what we mean by our values. Power makes things happen, but it is through the exercise of an appropriate balance between power and responsibility that helps ensure as many ‘good’ things happen as possible. This critical relationship between power and responsibility is reinforced by examining how these two concepts interact in practice.”

Thus, as Sri Lankans, are we fit to balance power with responsibility? I have hope that some day in the near future we would become fit to do so. But for now, your comments will be most welcome and appreciated.

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities.

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