The Magic Moment of Hope

Thought of the Day: What have been your magic moments of hope?

A football team marches down the field, time running out and the Quarterback slings one last long pass toward the end zone. It’s called a ‘Hail Mary.’ In professional football over the past 28 years there have been 35 successful attempts of such desperate attempts of one final hope.

And you can imagine they have been the highlight of every single fan’s memory of what it felt like to be awesome. To be part of a team.

Actors talk about that magic moment when they feel like they have reached their character or express a shade of the human experience in a way that captures something previously obscure.

And a painter or a writer follows an intriguing idea. Consider Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love  in her TED talk entitled ‘Your elusive creative genius.

There are moments in the writing process, acting, and playing sports that lead to self-discovery and achieving what was previously only hoped for.

These magic moments of hope supply us as human beings with motivation to keep moving forward. From a Positive Psychology and Hope Theory point of view, these moments would seem more like luck mixed in with hard work.

But that’s what the experience of life is often like.

“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson

What has been your moment, that you worked so hard to achieve, that it may have seemed like a long-shot with little chance. But somehow, someway you made it?

Also read: Irrational Love of the Word (and Experience) of Awesome