BELIEVING IS SEEING

Dewitt Jones says, “I won’t see it til I believe it.“ What an extraordinary thing to say! He’s a photographer from National Geographic. If you want to see his video—Celebrate What’s Right With The world—go to http://www.celebratetraining.com/?x=19&y=20
I love how it turns our rational notion of discovery on its head. It’s the sort of thinking that makes sense to a hope specialist.
It is summer time and I have a few spare moments to do some serious hope reading. For the millionth time I am struck by the ever-present paradox of hope science. Scholars outdo themselves trying to make their hope research look scientific. They develop measuring instruments. They make graphs and correlations. They present at conferences. When you meet these scholars you can’t help but notice that they are studying hope because they believe it is important.
When I ask them why they go to the trouble to make the measures and do the graphs, they tell me they have to do it to convince the scientists. They don’t need to convince themselves, they tell me, because they already believe it. But, they say, the scientists need proof. They have to see it before they’ll believe it.
I myself am not skeptical about hope. I wasn’t skeptical when I started working with it. So it may not be too surprising that I could keep on experimenting with hope strategies, over and over again, until I could get them to work so reliably that I could demonstrate them in impromptu interviews in classroom situations.
But I do notice that people who are skeptical about the importance of hope aren’t much interested in studying it. Perhaps this is why I am now testing the theory that you have to inspire them before you will get the chance to convince them. It is just possible that after you’ve inspired them, you won’t have to convince them at all. They’ll talk themselves into it and produce the evidence they need.