Doing More than Hoping

I try to hide it, but those who know me well understand I’m really just a hopeless romantic. Yes, I have a gruff side, as much to protect myself from being overwhelmed by emotions as anything. But I’m also pragmatic and rational, and I have no time for people who want to winge and whine about every little thing that’s wrong with, well, pretty much anything. I guess it’s something like that old saying of ‘hoping for the best, preparing for the worst.’

Having been in the cut-throat aviation business for over 40 years with 20 of that founding and owning a company in that industry, I have learned to be very bottom line, very transactional, and very impatient with things or people that are wrong for any given situation. I have learned hard decisions need to be made immediately and dispassionately – the opposite of a romantic. I know I haven’t always been right. I don’t expect to be. But I do expect to be right when it counts. Part of that comes from simply making a decision and not looking back. There is always a way forward. That is pragmatism.

From that, as you might expect, I am not a fan of the mentality that comes with simply hoping. Hoping implies no involvement, that we are passive observers and that whatever happens is just meant to be. Certainly, we can’t control everything that goes on around us, but we can take those conditions and work with them, leverage them into something to help ourselves or use them to make us better. Asking God to help us is asking God to intervene. I don’t believe God intervenes. I think we are put here to figure things out for ourselves. Asking God to help is really asking our subconscious to unleash that inner strength God has already given us.

Now that doesn’t mean I believe hope has no place in our mentality. I think hope is an instigator. Hope is the gateway to dreaming, and dreaming leads to visualization, which is the catalyst to taking action.

But back to the romantic side of things. How does one maintain a spirit of the romantic ideal while daily behaving in a bottom-line, pragmatic way that requires one to make sometimes ugly decisions? To me, one must divorce one’s execution of the tactics required to reach the romantic goal from the emotions that romantic pursuit provides. The route to the goal is littered with distractions and disappointments. We must discard those in order to keep our eye on the path we have set before us. That requires we exercise logical, rational, and timely decision-making. None of this is meant to imply we forsake our moral compass – we make these decisions within that guiding premise.

When I think about it, my idea of a romantic is embodied in the life, the actions and the writings of Theodore Roosevelt, our 25th President. He wrote eloquently (The Man in the Arena), was a leader and hero in war, an adventurer, and decisive politician. His motivations were primarily romantic, but the actions he often took to get there were not always so. He was determined to realize certain dreams, but also recognized the necessity of being pragmatic.

Don’t you think the romance, the idyllic vision of anything springs from a wish to make dreams, to make perfection, come true? I think it does. For me, I think that’s exactly where the notion of romance comes. Perfection. The idea of it, the momentary realization of it. The reality of it is fleeting, transitory; here one moment, gone the next. One day we achieve it, experience it, and the next day it is as if it was never here. Except for one thing – we remember it.

Memory is quite a conundrum. Motivating, debilitating; fond, joyful, despondent, destructive. All those things we remember that are so far from perfection and romance. Yet we gladly hold onto memories in order to relive the moments of beauty, grace, and sublime, blissful perfection.

So when you hope for something, isn’t it really those moments of perfection you are seeking to replicate? Whether they’re real or imagined, it is the replication of perfection we seek. The moments of nirvana. Certainly, you need a plan to get to nirvana, don’t you? I would say you do. It won’t ‘just happen.’ Visualize, actualize, mesmerize – do all you can to move past hope, move past fear, and move on to actualizing, to manifesting your vision. That is what being a romantic is. Making dreams come true.