Hope is What We Need

It may not be on the standard business school syllabus, but a smart and resilient hope is what we need.

We all have times in our lives when things seem hopeless. We appear to be facing insurmountable barriers to our dreams, desires, and goals. We’ve worked hard, planned well, and then something happens to block our way forward. And there seems to be no way around the obstacle. It can range along a wide spectrum of challenges from the aggravating to the terrifying. We can mope or rage, or even despair. And what we face can challenge us to our core.

Many great stories derive their energy and suspense from putting characters you’ve come to love up against such apparently impossible obstacles. How can they ever prevail? Surely, their doom is certain! Alas! How will they cope?

Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” is one of these books. Like another classic I recently read for the first time, “The Three Musketeers,” it shows how creative collaborations with trusted partners can prevail against the worst situations and the most crushing odds. I have to admit that the first 150 pages of this Dickens’ book were very unlike the beginning of “Great Expectations,” and “Oliver Twist” which had me from the start. The storytelling was a little more disjointed at first, the language less straightforward. But I’m glad I persisted, because it became an incredibly gripping and inspiring tale, not to be missed in this life.

I think the best literature gives us hope. It may remind us of the worst aspects of our condition. It may even lead us into some of the darkest places imaginable. But it will find light and reflect it to us, glimmerings of possibility to illumine our real paths in the world. That’s what my own novels seek to accomplish. In our time of dystopian realities, I’m glad to have been chosen to tell a story that’s neither dystopian nor utopian, but that displays how the virtues recognized by Aristotle and others can strengthen us and inspire us to achieve the apparently impossible, even in the little challenges of our everyday lives.

You probably know by now where you can find my stories. So today, I'll give you an easy way to find Dickens.

Find A Tale of Two Cities Here.