Both hope and fear are great motivators, and they both have the capacity to promote growth in us, but hope creates space in the mind and heart. Fear, more often than not, restricts it.
Just think of how you feel in your own body when you're afraid - you tense up and go on vigilant alert, like an animal bracing to fight or flee. Let's say you're walking down a dark deserted street and you hear someone following you. The instant you become aware of it your body and your mind go into hyper drive and all your energy is devoted to "Am I in danger? What do I do? Do I turn and confront? Do I run? If I confront, then what? If I run, where do I go?" Your entire world constricts to focus on the situation.
When you feel hopeful, your body's relaxed. You feel generous and open, not only with others, but with yourself too. Your world expands with ideas for how the hope could gather even more momentum. You feel motivated forward.
If fear takes too much hold of a personality, rigidity of thought and paranoia enter. When this happens on a national level the same trend is seen. You end up with things like racism, sexism and hate. When hope is experienced in the extreme in a personality, a sense of being un-tethered to reality allows delusion to enter, and on a national level this puts a culture in danger of complacency and unprepared-ness.
Obama inspired our country to make history by realizing that we need in our country the very same thing we need in our personal lives. When we use the better part of hope and fear together we're in the best position we can be in. The best part of fear is that it teaches us what we're afraid to lose, and the best part of hope is that once we know what we're afraid of losing we can set about nurturing it and keeping it strong and safe. And hope should be by far the greater force in this equation.
Fear is the prompt. Hope is the way. Fear is about trying to survive something. Hope is about knowing why you want to.
Both sides of the current political atmoshere seem to be propelled by this. Perhaps extreme hope and extreme fear result in similar results: Hyper-partisanism. My fear is that the results of these extremes on partisanship has supplanted the ideals of this nation's constitutional premise of negating the influences of faction by representation of "all" in government with a "winner-take-all", polar opposite philosophy of division and exclusion.
Even today, as Barack Obama has given me cause to be hopeful for our country and our world once again, I still fear that there are those that will try to stop him (and us) at all costs. There still are those that don't truly see the vision of what this country can be, that see only power lost and the threat of change. I listen to him speak about energy independence, education, creating opportunities to succeed, removing barriers based on color, gender, sexual preference, physical abilities, and I believe in my heart that THIS is what America truly stands for. I honestly cannot understand how any American can listen to him speak and fear his words, labeling them as Marxist or extreme. I do not understand how you can hear a description of America that echos the language of our "founding fathers" and not believe in those words.
In the end, it is their closed-minded fear that I fear the most.
I live in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California -on 65 acres of pristine natural beauty. Every day when I awaken, I feel truly blessed and honored to be a steward of this magnificent paradise. Where I have always been inspired by the harmony and purity of this landscape, inspiration has been in short-supply when contemplating the landscape of mankind -especially those in charge of leading our people.
Yet, now...for the first time in my 51 years, I have a new kind of hope. Hope in a president. Hope in our future -and the future of our children (our future generations!) For the first time in my life, I truly believe that integrity and ethics can be restored in government.
I am so thoroughly moved by Obama and the hope and vision he brings to our world, I was inspired to write this song/video. It is called 'For the Children' and it is my gift of love to the planet. I hope it inspires all who see it -as Barack Obama has inspired me! -Lynn Zanetta http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gi3VNLhHq4