Building Dreams

It would be great if I could always keep my eye on a positive future. There are difficulties ahead, without doubt--that is the nature of life. But to look forward towards the positive moments is one of he most valuable pleasures that we can have. The difference between the optimistic mindset and the pessimistic one has profound emotional impact--at least for me. By thinking about the good things that might happen, my mood goes up; by thinking about the bad things that could happen my mood goes down.

This kind of difference--between two different perspectives of the world--has been shown to affect human reasoning. Two different descriptions of the same situation will evoke different responses. From my personal introspection, I see this as being related to the emotional component that is being activated when I look at the world in one way or another.

In fact, it is recognized that gratitude for things can have a positive impact on mood. Gratitude is backward looking (for the most part), but it still carries a positive emotional valence because it is a focus on things that are good.

My habit is to look for problems. It's a habit that I want to change, because it's emotionally painful. But at the same time, we don't want to go through life oblivious to the problems that might beset us: we do want to be able to see the possible negative impact of our choices.

So we want to be able to strike a balance--to be aware of potential problems, and to create a foundation from which those problems can be addressed, and at the same time to focus our energy and intention on the creation of a positive future.

I guess that this was the basic idea behind this blog in the first place: to build dreams; to build the habit of focusing on a positive future. And that is something that has been something I've been working on, but most often I have been working on that habit in personal dimensions that I don't really want to write about. It's one thing to write about possible utopias; it's another, altogether, to write about the personal issues that I'm working on. Sometimes those issues have a universal character--the great religious leaders through history have addressed issues of self-control, of pessimism, of over-optimism, and many others. But my personal take on these things is not necessarily something that I want to write about.