How Utopian Stories Can Encourage Work in Reality

"I do a lot of public speaking, often debating public figures on television or other high profile settings, or giving speeches to large audiences," one Fellow, an immigration rights lobbyist, wrote in her query response. "I am constantly, almost involuntarily, honing my skills by debating adversaries or giving speeches when I'm alone (in the car or walking to the metro). They're not exactly imaginary worlds, but rather imagined versions of real-life settings in which I find myself"

Equally important to advocacy work, this Fellow carried around an internal "image of the kind of world I am trying to achieve." So, too, did the Fellow whose job has involved managing "a collaborative, mutually supportive, challenging teaching-and learning environment." A sense of the possible flowed from deep spiritual understanding for her: "I feel I am constantly 'traveling' back and forth between the deeper. inner world which is very close to the Divine, and the outer world which is sometimes congruent with this and often not. I am always trying to pull the two worlds closer together—first of all for me personally, and then for those with whom I live and work."