What have hope and kindness got to do with advertising, we might ask.
It’s a good question. These qualities seem to have deserted us in a long & frost-bitten winter of rolling crisis. Both inside our little world – and out in there in the real world. When everything is broken everywhere — all at once — it’s easy to feel defeat. What’s the point in hoping for better? The ones in power have zero interest in changing an unfair system. One that they created to keep the scales tipped in their own favour. Both inside our little world — and out in there in the real world.
But this apparently bleak corner can be where freedom begins. When we stop vesting our hope for better in structures that no longer have our interests at heart — where is left to turn but to ourselves? We have been in the driving seat all along. Creativity is a hopeful act. A place to learn faith. A game of positive energy. Directing our will onto something that doesn’t exist yet. Hoping that one day — with perseverance and endeavour — it will come to life. If so much needs to change we are living in an abundance of opportunity to do something meaningful.
The status-quo is brittle. Corrupt and less capable of stopping us than ever. All we need to do is get out of our own way. We all have our calling to pursue. Someone with a far better capacity for words than me once said: ‘They tried to bury us, they didn’t know that we were seeds.‘ The most potent change can come from the outside. Not from our ‘leaders‘ but from ourselves. The greatest art, the deepest provocations, the most original beauty has always been born in the margins. A world beneath the radar where the imagination is free to travel without the fear of surveillance. Our dreams exist to be at odds with reality. Be kind to them this winter and perhaps the change we want can flourish after all.
Featured image: Dave Haas / Pexels
