It's called faith. Faith that tomorrow will be a better day. Faith is hard work.
People aren't taught well what it is, how to produce it and how to hang on to it when it's most needed.
Doesn't matter which geography/culture/religion you are from, understanding how faith is generated in self and in others/what it takes to preserve it under stress is fundamental to doing the hard stuff.
> People aren't taught well what it is, how to produce it and how to hang on to it when it's most needed.
I don't know about you but I don't see many signs of unselfish faith anywhere these days, at all. I think where I get hung up on what exactly faith is, is somewhere around when someone says it's some "something" that can be summoned, and when I look it up on wikipedia it's something produced on demand by enlightened individuals who catch on at some point.
There's one problem that's been fairly rampant in America for over a century: no one is enlightened anymore, and no one can give any convincing reason that their vision of faith, or just simply what got them through the hard times, is useful to you. Is today's world anything like what the people who built it intended when they set out a few decades ago? Are their sources of faith still useful, and if they're not, well then who's selling the faith fodder these days?
i.e. if faith is what everyone needs, then you have to look first at why it's fallen out of favor to the point where it needs a sales pitch. Why people give a shit about more things than ever before, and why none of them involve the fundamental component to doing the hard stuff: a good reason why.
Jeff Atwood did not have to write this article.
The guy has an establised rep. Is working on a well known project. He does not have to say anything.
He knows as soon as he opens his mouth, about an issue which no one has a great solution for, he is opening himself up to unneeded attack. But he does it anyway.
That's what I see.
That people like him are around.
And they will try.
That's what gives me faith.
Faith does not guarantee happy endings or heroes and that is why it is hard.
So think about faith. Again and again. About how to produce and sustain it.
People underestimate the value of doing that and develop misguided notions about rituals/imagery/narratives that have evolved in all people to produce faith. To tackle the hard stuff.
People aren't taught well what it is, how to produce it and how to hang on to it when it's most needed.
Doesn't matter which geography/culture/religion you are from, understanding how faith is generated in self and in others/what it takes to preserve it under stress is fundamental to doing the hard stuff.