Eleanor Roosevelt - the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams

Eleanor Roosevelt
Wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, born in 1884, used her influence as First Lady to promote her husband’s New Deal policies, and also took an active role in advocating civil rights.

RLF: Why do you think dreams are so important?

Eleanor Roosevelt: Well, first of all, I must explain what I mean by the word ‘dreams’ before I can answer your question. By the word ‘dreams’, I do not mean those activities that proceed whilst one is asleep signaled by rapid eye movement. What I call dreams are those aspirations that seem so lofty that they can hardly be kept except by the most fervent wishes coupled with action to fulfill them.

For no aspirations ever got realized merely by the wanting. Hope is necessary, of course, for without it where would we be? Drowning in the mediocrity of the commonplace is what we would be doing without hope itself.

RLF: So your notion of dreams is more akin to aspirations or ambitions?

ER: Yes, that is right, and I think they are important to us – vital, in fact, because those who aspire make endeavor their daily toil. Such people, if they have a belief in themselves and their abilities, which they most assuredly must have to aspire, place themselves in an unforeseen future and work towards seeing it.

And without aspirations, what are we? What would we as human beings have achieved if there had not been people to dream. It was the constant dream of my husband to be able to better the lot of ordinary people in the great nation he had a part in building. His ‘New Deal’ was just such a program to lift people out of poverty, to elevate them and to give them the confidence to aspire, to hope, and to achieve, for that is the American dream – not merely to strike it rich, but to realize one’s true potential – like the rosebud’s impending act of flowering into beauty – to be seen to be part of the wonder of Nature – which is all that we should desire. We have been blessed with the powers of reasoning, of intelligence, with the power to change both ourselves and the world in which we live, and it is our destiny to do that.

RLF: So fulfilling our role in life – our true potential, is equated by you with finding our own true nature, is it not?

ER: Exactly so. And it is precisely for that reason that I say the future belongs to those who believe in their dreams and the beauty therein. The future belongs to them, which is not to say that they should be able to control the future of others – that is a misinterpretation of the spirit of capitalism and opportunity, in my opinion, but rather it belongs to them in as much as the finest thing they can do for themselves is to enable their fellow men and women to do the same as they have done.

RLF: But where would any advantage lie if they were to enable others to be as successful as they had been?

ER: I see you labor under that same misapprehension – that prosperity lies in success being limited to a sort of chosen few – that is the sort of social Darwinism I abhor. Success is made more comprehensive and lasting, and by it opportunity in relative amounts, by all achieving their potential. Looking down on someone less fortunate than oneself is only a comfort to those who have barely got what it takes to succeed. The truly successful are those who can help others still on the lower rungs of life’s ladders, for there is more than one such, and to assist in their climbing that particular ladder - not by standing on the head of the person below, as is the way popularized by Hollywood and by cheap novellas, but by lending a hand whether or not one is asked for.

RLF: Do you not think that lending someone a hand belittles that person being so assisted?

ER: Not at all, if it is offered in a spirit of warmth and friendship. On the contrary, I should say that such a helping hand when it is most needed ennobles both the giver and the receiver of that help.

Do we not refer to the helping as the professions – teachers are professionals, doctors and all the caring vocations that do for others and lead by example. My husband was wont to say that ‘competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.’ It is cooperation, whether in the Tennessee valley or elsewhere that gets things done and moves us forward to greater things.

And the cooperation that leads each to reach his own heights and fulfill his ambitions is much, much more productive than mere competition could ever be.

Competition merely puts limits on achievement – one person’s actions appear to outreach another’s and that is the end of the matter – the competition has been won. Sadly, in my opinion, that competitive spirit so lauded by many has been and still is responsible for our worshipping at the altar of economic growth without a care for the consequences to ourselves or our environment – the good Earth that feeds and clothes us.
Robert L. Fielding

Περικλῆς Pericles - 'surrounded by glory'

Pericles
Pericles, whose name means, ‘surrounded by glory’ was born around the year 495 BCE. Such was his influence of his fellow citizens, that the historian, Thucydides named him ‘the first citizen of Athens’.

Sir William Hunter - bequeath something for future generations

Kelvin - when you are face to face with adversity, you are up against a discovery

Lord Kelvin, formerly Professor William Thomson, was knighted by Queen Victoria as a reward for his participation in laying the Atlantic telegraph cable and service to science.

Contrary to popular opinion, particulalry in Glasgow, home to the fabulous Kelvingrove Museum, Kelvin did not give his name to nearby River Kelvin, but took his name from it, and will be foerver associated with the formerly so-called, 'second city of the Empire and the magnificent University of Glasgow.

He was awarded a coat of arms with the motto "Honesty is the best policy". He once said that 'you can undestand perfectly, if you put your mind to it.

RLF:

John Knox - Be fearless and steadfast in what you believe

John Knox
Living in turbulent times, and born in 1514, John Knox was a Scottish religious reformer who lead the Church of Scotland in Calvinist directions.
In 'Talking to Pharaohs', Knox discusses the resourcefullness and self-belief vital in any struggle.

Kiya: Goodness personified

Locke: Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

RLF: Why do you hold that fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues?

JL: For the very simple reason that were fortitude to be absent, we would surely shrink from those attitudes and strengths that bear us through life.

For in all events that befall us, be they fulfilling or otherwise, they have in all of them the seeds of that negative side that we seem to be heir to – the human condition.

Consider, in love, that most worthy and sacred quality vested in us, there comes kindred feelings that we would otherwise fall foul of though we should look them dead to be free of them. Do not jealousy and sometimes despair accompany love? Should we not immune ourselves from them by adopting a wider view that fortitude is a part?

Human nature is characterized by reason and tolerance, it is true, but emotional disturbances, even those caused by love can lead us to be unreasonable and intolerant – fortitude is a way back from those two cul-de-sacs.

Patience, the underpinning of fortitude is an oft underestimated quality that modern life bears down upon, making us want what we cannot always have – making us want what we would not in a more rational moment.

Impatience, a heat imparted to our blood by too fond a desire, can drive us to act in ways, and say things we would most likely never do in quieter, slower moments when we can think straight, as we say.

Patience is the quality of seeing urgency as merely a deception – as a quickness of events imparted somewhat irrationally to our actions as well as to our frame of mind.

Irrational fears, dark as they can appear, frightening as they can seem, will fade if we once have fortitude – that quality found in the gregarious side of our nature – coming to realize that a trouble shared is a trouble halved, as we say, with further proportional divisions of strife as we communicate with those around us.

Loneliness can sometimes be little more than imagining that there is nobody in tune with us – that can never be – the human condition, facing the world and all its ills as well as those facets that are more positive, is bound to the probability that someone is experiencing similar feelings to us, whoever we are and whatever we are exposed to.

Fortitude enables us to find comradeship in others and strength from within to meet our needs in times of even our greatest peril. Have fortitude and your enemies shall wither away!
Robert L. Fielding

Akhenaten - Internationalism