Hope is a strong motivating factor. People ascribe to hope to know they are making the right decisions. No one knows what those decisions truly are, granted, but with a little bit of hope and some clear belief in yourself, you’re directly on your way to making your dreams become a reality. Hope is something driven people use to get where they’re going.
Of the two components that you rely on and (well) hope for, only one of those is within your control: you hope that you don’t screw up the opportunities that are presented to you. That one’s yours. And secondly, you hope that by not screwing up and doing your very best someone else acknowledges that and rewards you for it.
(Hope is different than faith, mind you, because faith is something that is grabbed at and clutched blindly without any basis in reality; whereas hope is something that you have control over and create along the way. To have blind faith, while it works for some, is unsubstantiated. Hope is the Über-successful cousin of faith… like Matt Damon is to Ben Affleck.)
The Oregon Ducks have done everything they need so far this season to give themselves a fighting chance at a national title game, and to this point, they’ve been rewarded by others. Which, remember, is the part out of their control.
Oregon, after a sluggish first half, beat up on a lesser California Golden Bears team this past Saturday, and the BCS computers have rewarded the Ducks with a #2 ranking. (No one’s arguing that #1 Alabama losing didn’t help.) Which, of course, means that if the game were today, Oregon would be playing for the national championship.
Now comes the hard part—they have to live up to their own expectations and don’t screw up.
Oregon has to continue to execute with precision what they’re doing well. They need to continue to play to win as opposed to playing simply not to lose. Don’t get caught up in perception. Don’t allow what’s in their grasp to get away. They need to trust that they have what it takes to follow through in the end. They need to use the hope of the season as a guiding force towards their ultimate achievement. And with two formidable opponents left, Stanford and Oregon State, both ranked teams on the road, by the way, the Ducks can’t afford to give up hope. They can’t afford to focus on what could go wrong; rather, they need to focus on what’s been successful so far so they’re ready when the time is right to capture what they’ve always hoped for all along.
Some may dispute that hope has as much to do with the effects of an outcome as it does, but it seems completely clear to me that in a world where there is no certainty, hope is the only thing you can maintain. It may waiver, yes, but as long as it’s grounded in the belief that you, yourself are doing the right thing, then you can’t go wrong.
And if the Ducks continue to forge ahead believing in themselves, then neither can they.
(Image from http://blog.stack.com)
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