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The greater danger

for most of us

is not that our aim is

too high

and we miss it,

but that it is

too low

and we reach it.

MICHELANGELO

(1475–1564)

Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and poet, Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti is an outstanding figure in the history of the visual arts.

Over the past twenty-five or so years, I have appeared regularly on radio and television talk shows, conversing with listeners who call in and join the discussion. One of the most frequent criticisms I have received from the hosts of these shows is that I offer far too much hope for people in dire circumstances and that this could be a dangerous thing. Despite this kind of fault-finding, I am still at a loss to understand how having too much hope could be a dangerous thing.

When people tell me of a medical diagnosis that implies no cure being possible, I encourage them to shift their aim to a completely opposite outcome. I talk frequently about the law that has allowed any miracle that has ever occurred, since the inception of time, to take place. I explain that that law has never been repealed and is still on the books. I cite cases of people who were told to go home and wait to die, who were given six months to live and who freed themselves of their illnesses and their diagnosis. I receive mail every day from people who refused to listen to the low aims and the low hopes that others have had for them, describing how grateful they were for a message of hope in difficult times.

I believe that Michelangelo, who lived a few days shy of eighty-nine years, still sculpting, painting, writing, and designing in an age when ninety was about sixty years beyond normal life expectancy, was speaking to this idea of having very high hopes and aims in this famous quotation of his. The danger is not in false hope, rather it is in no hope or low hope, and consequently our objectives and aims are diminished by our beliefs before they can be worked on and materialized.