When people you love are having a crisis, they may be looking to you for hope. A crisis is the time for audacious hoping, for unusual measures, for speaking hopeful language, as much for your own health as for theirs. It is the time to skip forward across the rough patch, to use the language of when; when you are feeling better, when things don't look so bleak, when you can see a future for yourself again, when this crisis passes, when you are more like your old self, etc.
A crisis is also an ideal time to remember and tell stories about things that turned out better than you expected, impossible things that became possible, things that turned out okay, even though you didn't think they would. These stories don't have to have anything to do with the present crisis. In fact, they will be easier to hear and tell if
they are totally unrelated in nature. The purpose of telling stories with unexpectedly good results is that it opens a small space for hope, and once you start to feel hope, that feeling can creep into other areas of your life.
Stories with unexpected endings are surprisingly easy to muster. Who would have thought, for example, that the Berlin Wall would be
taken down by the local citizens, or that the slaves of the 19th century would ever have been freed? If these things were possible, then anything might be possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment