The Love Boat

I am part of the generation that was raised by television. Saturday nights was The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Both are about imagining another, happier place where everything always works out in the end. It’s appealing. So I watched an old episode on YouTube and it was so…kind. It gave me a sad feeling of nostalgia that some things were kinder in the past. Not all things. That’s always a mistake; imagining that everything was better before. Depends on who and where. But that kind of TV show was so popular and was so nice. Everyone was kind, the jokes were all silly, and the whole concept was ridiculous, and I can allow myself to be nostalgic for a world where something so silly was so popular.

I don’t know if it is a human characteristic or if we’ve been taught it (nature or nurture): that we are so very attracted to happy endings. It may all be part of that human blindness towards our own deaths? We all like the character who wins against the odds, who succeeds in spite of everyone telling them that they’re going to fail, but they are maybe the exception and not the rule.

There is such power in imagination; if we believe in a good outcome, we can make it happen. Or to put it this way, if we don’t believe it, it’s not likely to happen on its own. This positivity is both necessary and irrational. (I mean, it’s not going to work out in the end; we’re all going to die someday.)

I guess that’s what my yoga practice is about. In the morning, I breathe and stretch and find out how my body is feeling for the day, and I try to put myself in a frame of mind that everything is going to be okay, that people are kind and that the world is a gentle place. It doesn’t matter that it’s not true, because the only way it could ever become true is if folks believe it could be. Have to start some where.

So I’m giving Foro a hug and I’ll try to imagine that I’m hugging the whole world. (Can you feel it? I hope so!)