The Impossible Dream.
A song, a reflection.
I don’t know that I’ve ever told anyone besides my wife, but quite possibly my favourite song ever is “The Impossible Dream” it’s not long, give it a listen.
I truly love this song, and I have since I was a child. While it could have many meanings to many people, to me the song really is about striving towards things which seem impossible, but which we wish for anyways; trying to “right the un-rightable wrong”, as it were.
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Going through life, my goals are rather simple: To live a good life, to enrich the lives of those around me, to try and help solve our big problems, and to leave the world better than I found it. I do have all manner of personal intricately interwoven goals, but those goals ultimately should all funnel down to serve these larger goals. I workout so I can enjoy my day and live a long healthy life with friends and family, I manage my finances so I can fund my kid’s education and donate to causes I care about.
Even with the YouTube channel that I started a decade ago, my primary missions were spreading knowledge, and promoting a certain way of building cities — which really ultimately come down to these exact same goals. I’ve come around to the reality over time that news media, and most media, is drawn to the negative like moths to a light. People also do seem for some reason to like to discuss negative things; perhaps because it lets us feel we are unloading some of our own problems.
And so again I meet this head on. My goal is to try and do what I can when I can. Sometimes that’s advocating positively, but it’s also something I try to make part of my everyday actions. Pausing when someone says something that offends me instead of delivering an angry and escalatory response. Supporting ethical businesses. Donating as much as I can to causes I care about. Helping lost passerby. Encouraging peace rather than war. Taking the stairs. Complementing a neighbour on the obvious attention they pay their garden. Giving my time to give advice. Using less plastic even when it can make life a bit more difficult. Doing the right thing even when nobody is watching or it won’t be reciprocated. When I can do these things even in direct opposition to forces making the problems they aim to address worse, I can do it with even more certainty.
So often people lament the grand challenges the world faces. Climate change, population decline, car-oriented infrastructure, horrendous treatment of animals, violence, and struggling democracy. I prefer to at least also be part of the solution — and if possible to make that part of a reframing of these problems as opportunities for greatness — “to march into hell for a heavenly cause”. To not immediately go from complaining, to being part of the problem and indeed sometimes reminding people they are doing this, gently. As I see more problems, I hope to also find more ways I can help, and importantly inspire many others to do the same, so that we may turn the tide, even if only in our hearts and minds.
My dream with Cinq Personnes is to tell the positive side of the story, to be relentlessly solution-oriented and glass-half-full. I won’t always achieve this, but it is my goal, and accepting the reality of continually striving even when the thing you are striving for always remains just out of reach is part of this journey.
Bravo! Acts of kindness are a positive force multiplier.