I like the word ‘torpor’ — a state of physical or mental lethargy. I like the word much more than I like feeling it.
I feel torpor when I spend too long doom-scrolling the news. I notice hope quickly sapping away.
The easiest thing is to be depressed about the state of the world. It is harder work to be hopeful.
And yet, we have to find the energy to stay hopeful. Because the elements of the future we want to build lie in the present. They actually surround us.
But if we succumb to torpor we stop looking, stop searching, stop noticing and then that future slips out of our fingers.
(There’s three-horizons thinking underlying this post. Check out the Three Horizons Model in Tools for Regenerative Design).