Helen Keller: All doers are optimists
“The desire and will to work is optimism itself,” writes Helen Keller in Optimism: An Essay (1903). “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”In our world where the gray, 9-5 cubicle represents the antithesis of hope – the promise of dreary, monotonous, dull days to come – we seem to have lost the connection between optimism and work that Keller speaks of. So what was she talking about?
The desire and motivation to work, she says, are fueled by the fundamental belief that you can have an impact; that your efforts mean something and can change the world for the better. You can take fragments of ideas or materials and turn them into something orderly, meaningful.
“The optimist believes, attempts, achieves. He stands always in the sunlight,” she writes. “Some day the wonderful, the inexpressible, arrives and shines upon him, and he is there to welcome it. His soul meets his own and beats a glad march to every new discovery, every fresh victory over difficulties, every addition to human knowledge and happiness.”Read more. http://kiramnewman.com/
