Emerging insights from the scholars of the science of awe tell us that Awe lives in the upper reaches of pleasure and has two key attributes: vastness, the experience of something larger than ourselves, and accommodation, the requirement that we adjust our mental structures. Awe brings people together and into the present moment, including with the lived experience of being part of history. The sight of the Grand Canyon, the birth of a child, a spectacular sunrise or sunset - all change our perceptions of time and expand the moment.
The recent NLN Education Summit in Chicago should be added to these examples of awesomeness. It captured how those who came before us saw the world. Our founders saw and heard things differently from us, and they thought differently. But in his novel Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner told us that "the past is never dead. It's not even past."
Indeed, in certain ways, the past is always with us. It is known as legacy, and legacy brings the past into the present. Nursing's history is rich with highly original thinkers who looked for ways to solve problems - improve on existing ideas - to develop useful solutions to meet the needs of the time. This organization's unique perspective throughout time has set us apart from the other nursing organizations with which we coexist. We push boundaries and embrace being agents of change as we relentlessly make things happen on behalf of our membership, while executing the ideas of our members.
Let's build on our legacy, our sense of meaning and connection to nursing's heroes, not to use it as an ending for what no longer works but to help us encode, energize, edit, and elevate. A mindset of "this is how we've always done it" will make us stale, irrelevant, and as extinct as dinosaurs. Riding on the fumes of the past, rather than meshing who we were and who we are now, extracting the best, and adding what the future offers, is lethal.
Here are some action imperatives for the future that I encourage us all to deploy:
1. Inspire optimism by drawing on the instruments of inquiry/innovation. Practice intellectual humility, a greater willingness to consider views other than our own.
2. Maintain a sense of wonder, which is crucial to creativity and innovation. But note that there is a business case for curiosity. According to the Harvard Business Review (September-October 2018), merely describing a day when you felt curious has been shown to boost mental and physical energy by 20 percent more than recounting a time of profound happiness.
3. Unite our collective ambition and denounce weapons of polarization, even when we disagree. Communicate always to enhance our reputation, recognition, impact, and engagement.
4. For the NLN, your degrees, bloodline, gender identity, region, and time in this country are not what matters. Rather, it is more important than ever to work on stories of civility, courage, celebration, character, and change. Excellence never excludes anyone. Bolster an imagination that includes in thought, word, and deed the dignity of every human being and every healthy form of educational development.
5. Remember that language is action. When we speak, we generate our reality and generate our future. Talk and teach in the next dimension. The learner inherits the future. The learned has only the past.
6. Lead with magnanimity and daring ingenuity. Focus and support our strategic plan and plan for generosity. Demand higher standards. Much of the impact of our legacy in this world hinges on our willingness to be a voice, not an echo. Strive to be and do better. Do not sit on the premises - stand on the promises.
7. Apply grit, sometimes referred to as resilience, which is the ability to endure human ridicule profusely. Forgo comfort and stand firm against the grain of current thinking and opposition and be willing to forgive others.
Fidelity to our enduring values of excellence, caring, diversity, and integrity with character and conviction must be nurtured and turned to, because they serve as our North Star and will help us find the way forward. We must take care of our great inheritance. What will happen in all the days to come is what we do today!
In a troubled world struggling for hope and wanting for light and leadership, where effort has lost out to entitlement, we must "stay woke"; continue to carry the bright flame of goodness, civility, and inclusion; and respond in kind. If we do not, history will not be kind to us, and a cheated destiny will exact its revenge.
In Awe!