Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

by Henry Cloud

So the truth was that there had been hope, but we just could not see it at the time. But why? Why was there hope and not just a wish? The reason that our stalled enterprise was able to gain steam was similar to a law of physics: entropy increases, or things get worse over time, in a closed system. But if you open the system up and bring in a new source of energy and a template or a structure of truth to give direction to the energy, things can turn around. Entropy can be reversed. That is what happened, there was new truth to give direction to the energy that we were pouring into the enterprise. The wisdom of the highly experienced health-care industry professionals gave us direction, structure, and a path. Everything reversed course and got better. They added what we did not have. So the lesson here is this: you can have objective hope if you are bringing some new knowledge, wisdom, or know-how to the situation. Obviously if things are not working, you need a second opinion, some new ideas, some knowledge that is not present. Without that, you may only be wishing. But if you really are bringing new wisdom to bear on a situation that is hopeless, you might have good reason to have true, objective hope.