Is Opportunity Now Here or Nowhere?

How many of us are able to look beyond our old mental models and consider new possibilities?

Next Saturday, Mindset Shifts U returns with the third session of Seneca’s “On Anger.” On January 25th, we begin our consideration of Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life” and Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.

Guided by a Living Philosophy: Mindset Shifts U in 2025

Opportunityisnowhere. What did you just read?  Perhaps you read opportunity is nowhere. Or did you read opportunity is now here?

In his book Developing Ecological Consciousness, Christopher Uhl counsels, “If we see the world in a hopeless downward spiral, then opportunity is indeed ‘nowhere.’”

It would be Pollyannaish to deny the immense problems the world faces today or to deny that the coming years will bring many different, difficult challenges. Yet, how fast the world emerges from these challenges depends on how many of us are able to look beyond our old mental models and consider new possibilities.

Robert Desnos was a French surrealistic poet. During World War II he was part of the French resistance. Captured by the Nazis in 1944, he was first deported to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, and finally in 1945 to Terezín (Theresienstadt) in occupied Czechoslovakia.

In her essay “To Love the Marigold,” which is contained in Paul Loeb’s anthology The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, Susan Griffin tells this powerful story about Desnos in Terezín:

Along with many others who crowd the bed of a large truck…Desnos is being taken away from the barracks of the concentration camp where he has been held prisoner. Leaving the barracks, the mood is somber; everyone knows the truck is headed for the gas chambers. And when the truck arrives no one can speak at all; even the guards fall silent. But this silence is soon interrupted by an energetic man, who jumps into the line and grabs one of the condemned. Improbable as it is,…Desnos reads the man's palm.

Oh, he says, I see you have a very long lifeline. And you are going to have three children. He is exuberant. And his excitement is contagious. First one man, then another, offers up his hand, and the prediction is for longevity, more children, abundant joy.

As Desnos reads more palms, not only does the mood of the prisoners change but that of the guards too. How can one explain it? Perhaps the element of surprise has planted a shadow of doubt in their minds. If they told themselves these deaths were inevitable, this no longer seems inarguable. They are in any case so disoriented by this sudden change of mood among those they are about to kill that they are unable to go through with the executions. So all the men, along with Desnos, are packed back onto the truck and taken back to the barracks. Desnos has saved his own life and the lives of others by using his imagination…

Robert Desnos was famous for his belief in the imagination. He believed it could transform society. And what a wild leap this was, at the mouth of the gas chambers, to imagine a long life! In his mind he simply stepped outside the world as it was created by the SS.

Desnos saved many lives that day with his ability to step outside of the existing boundaries.  Yet the concentration camps took their toll on Desnos; just weeks after the camp was liberated, he died of typhus.

If you have read anything about the brutality of Nazi concentration camps, you know just how improbable this story is. Yet I have read nothing that challenges this remarkable account.

What is striking about this story is that Desnos was not just against the Nazis; if he was just against the Nazis, he may have done nothing notable. Desnos was for something—he was for the right to evolve in accordance with one's own nature. And because he was for freedom, his imagination generated actions that created freedom in impossible circumstances.

There are lessons to be learned from this story. Every day, as the United States continues its downward spiral, we are told bold action is not possible. We are told the Federal Reserve must continue with its destructive monetary policy and that the government must continue to run large deficits as it bails out the next generation of failing firms and banks.

We are told by politicians and experts, paid by Big Pharma and Big Food, that RFK Jr. is too dangerous to be in Trump’s cabinet. Big Pharma would rather you watch more television and ask your doctor about the drug you just learned about in their incessant pharmaceutical ads. They hope you pay no attention to the warnings at the end of the ad that the drug may cause death, strokes, and so on. They want to believe the pill is not as dangerous as thinking for yourself and questioning the orthodoxy.

People who get with the program are scared of those who don’t. Heretics remind us that we are responsible for our choices, which is a terrible message for some.

In our personal lives, we often behave the same way. We don’t want to disrupt the status quo, so we indulge in destructive habits and listen to our ego's tedious list of grievances, which are against something but for little of value.

As we go along with the program, the capacity of our mental muscles to generate imaginative, creative solutions atrophies. Yet, because the opportunity to change our mind is always present, opportunity is indeed now here.

Listen to us in your turn, sailors, pilots, soldiers.
We wish you good morning.
We do not speak to you of our suffering but of our hope,
On the threshold of a new day we say good morning,
To you who are near also to you
Who will receive our morning prayer
At the moment when twilight, in straw boots, enters your houses.

And good morning just the same and good morning for tomorrow
And good morning of good heart and all our kin
Good morning, good morning, the sun will rise over Paris
Even if hidden by clouds it will still be there
Good morning, good morning, with all of my heart bonjour.

– Robert Desnos, from “The Night Watchman of the Pont-au-Change,” translated by Carolyn Forché