Knowing When to Turn Back: Wishful Thinking and Hopeful Thinking

One of my earliest memories is getting lost with my brothers while playing near our campground in Rocky Mountain National Park.  We were busy exploring and climbing on lichen-covered boulders in the pine woods when we discovered we didn’t know where we were. Eventually we found a ranger station and someone got us back to the campsite.

I have also experienced a few frightening moments as an adult.  When we were living on Great Barrier Island in New Zealand, I took an afternoon hike by myself on a path that was not well travelled.  As I was finding my way along the ridge, trying to follow the way through the bush, the fog rolled in, making it impossible to get any sense of perspective.  I also knew that there was a drop off into the ocean that I had to avoid.  Needless to say, I was relieved when I finally got back to our cottage.  My daughters wondered where I had been for so long.

Recently I participated in a zoom book discussion on Necessary Endings, by Cloud.  I have been contemplating one of the distinctions made by Cloud between hopeful thinking and wishful thinking. Hopeful thinking is based on evidence of past experience.  You ask yourself:  Have I seen this pattern before? Does this path have the same characteristics of the successful paths I have navigated prior to this?  Wishful thinking is based on eternal optimism, in spite of any evidence. 

I took a walk in the Reinstein Woods this past weekend.  Someone warned me that it was easy to get lost on the paths if you weren’t careful, especially because woods was next to another nature area.  I could find no map when I arrived.  As I began my hike, I thought about the application of “hopeful” thinking in finding my way.  How could I be intentional in managing risk as I hiked so that I could go as far without getting lost?  I thought the fact that the foliage had not come out would help me, but it did not help me keep oriented.  It did reveal landscape elements that would have been hidden otherwise.  As I walked, I thought about the parallels with “hopeful” approaches to managing institutional change where you needed to maximize change, push the limits of risk, while always having clear benchmarks or evidence from which to decide to end an initiative or change direction, or in my case of my hike, turn back.

I started with clear strategies.  I decided that I would always go to the left when I reached a crossroads or branch.  This would ensure that I could maximize the distance I walked without mistakenly turning back.  Next, I decided that I would continue and not turn back as long as I saw signs that pointed back to the nature center and parking lot when I reached a new path.  These were my touch points.  I hiked about three miles, always turning to the left and always seeing the signs back to the nature center and parking lot going the other direction. Then I came to a place where I encountered a sign that pointed to the parking area but did not mention the nature center.  Was it the case that the signage had left off the nature center, or was this a different parking lot which meant that I had ventured into the adjacent nature area? Should I be wishful in thinking that it was the former case, change the rules that I had set out for myself at the beginning and keep on, so that I could prove that I could persist and go further?  Or should I stick to my decision-making structure and turn back? 

My default has been on the persistence end of the scale.  Perhaps shading into the wishful thinking realm and sometimes getting lost.  But having read Necessary Endings, and having set the evidence parameters in place before I started on my hike, I turned back.

I am trying to wean myself from wishful thinking.  I want to be someone who manages change with clear parameters that are firmly based in reality, no matter how hard that reality is. And I want to take long hikes without getting lost.