Walking with Barack...

That’s the power of hope – to imagine, and then work for, what had seemed impossible before.
- U.S. Senator Barak Obama campaigning in Iowa, 12/27/2007

Welcome to the dessert.

Again.

It's the place between Christmas and New Year's Day. It's the space between what has been and what will be.

Welcome to the dessert.

Does it feel familiar? It should. The place is littered with the landmarks of your life for the last 12 months.

Where did you go? What did you do? How did you live?

Welcome to the dessert.

The journey is unavoidable. The questions are everywhere as media force feed reflection of our pop culture and in doing so, ourselves as well. We read, we listen, we watch endless rehashes of the year's major happenings.

Who won? Who lost? What came into fashion? What fell out of style? We get endless lists of the best and the worst of everything that happened in 2007.

Each story, each list, each song, marks a moment in our personal lives. Where were you when blah, blah happened? What where you doing when this song came out, that commercial played and this game happened?

We hear the winds of this year past on every radio station. We watch the sights on every newscast. We relive the moments in every magazine. And we are exposed to them every, single day -- all day and night -- between Christmas and New Year's.

The stories give shape and form to what has been. We give shape and form to what will be.

Think about where you have been this year. What brought you great joy? What gave you great happiness? What brought you great love?

Hold onto those feelings. Hold onto those times. Make your own list of the best by writing them down. Use them as guides to even better times ahead.

Use them to help you decide what you really want your life to be in the coming year.

Barack Obama, the man from Chicago by way of Hawaii, sent a message from the presidential campaign trail in Iowa recently.

No matter what you are feeling, no matter what you are doing, no matter how "unrealistic" you think your dream may be, Mr. Obama encourages you to believe. Believe you can do more. Believe you can be more. Believe you can achieve more.

"That’s the power of hope – to imagine, and then work for, what had seemed impossible before," he says.

Welcome to the dessert.

Again.

Now go do the impossible.

Become a prisoner of hope...

The categories of optimism and pessimism don't exist.

Optimism is a secular construct -- a calculation of probability.

Better to be instead, a prisoner of hope.

Hope wrestles with despair without generating optimism. Hope gives people the courage to "bear witness" and "see what the end is going to be." There is no calculation with hope. When we embrace it, we commit ourselves, without any guarantees, to a better tomorrow.

This is the paraphrased quote expressed by Cornell West as reported in the 40th anniversary edition of Rolling Stone Magazine. That was last December but given the extraordinary and wonderful things that have happened this year -- from the presidential election to the tumbeling of high gas prices, becoming a prisoner of hope remains a powerful idea.

Embrace hope.

Most of the time we weigh the odds in a situation and then make a decision to be optimistic. Do I have enough gas? Will I make it home? Can I close this deal? Will I beat this deadline? Can I get this job, promotion, house etc...

We calculate all the variables we can think of in our mind. We check the gauges, run through the probable scenarios and settle on the one we want to happen based on the facts we think we know. And generally, this approach works.

We choose to be optimistic because we can calculate a positive outcome.

But what happens when the variables are too fluid? What happens when we can't wrap our minds around the possible positive outcomes? Am I safe? Will the world be a better place? What will happen tomorrow?

We abandon optimism and embrace pessimism.

Ultimately, weighing the odds as a path to optimism fails us. Optimism's doppelganger pessimism is always there, lurking in the back of our mind. Whatever positive outcome we can think of based on the odds, the inverse is there too, waiting to creep out of the shadows of doubt in any optimistic calculation.

We are prisoners of the formula we use to navigate everyday life.

If we must be prisoners, then let it be inside the bright walls of hope. There is no calculation with hope, no variables to be weighed, no possible negatives to weigh against.

We hope because we believe against all odds.

We hope because we have faith despite the circumstance.

We hope because we can.

Embracing hope is contrary in an age of instant information. The facts, the variables are all their to serve us in our calculations. From news to statistics, from text messaging and cell phones to portable GPS navigation systems -- we have endless sources of facts for our formulas. All of it waiting at the touch of a button.

In the end, information itself is not enough. There's too much, the scenarios are too many, the possibilities for a negative outcome too high.

When faced with the darkest times, we often become a prisoner of hope by default and we achieve what we thought was impossible.

Stop doing the math. Erase the formula.

Believe against all odds.

Have faith despite the circumstance.

Hope because you can.