You Lost fans will love this one. I’m only now catching up on the past few seasons in crazy marathon-mode. And the last episode I watched—Season 3, Episode 10, featuring Cheech of “…and Chong”—was about Hurly as a young boy (when he was called Hugo). Hurley had flashed back to a time his father and he were fixing a car—but before they had, Cheech put his son in the car, gave him the keys and told him to try turning it on.

Cheech Marin is big on high hope

Little Hugo knew the car couldn’t start. “It’s stupid,” he said. “Without a new carburetor, it’s not gonna work.” This is what Cheech said:

“Having hope is never stupid. You gotta believe good things will happen, and then they will. Understand what I’m saying? In this world, son, you gotta make your own luck. Alright?”

Unfortunately for little Hugo in the show, the father then took off on a motorcycle, not to be seen or heard from again for 17 years. But hey, that’s the worst case scenario. And it’s TV. You on the other hand, have a chance to get so much more out of this Lost lesson.

Take those words in. Really think about them for a minute. They are, in a sense, what my book Meeting Your Half-Orange is based on. It’s based on the essence of hope: how we’ve all been trained by hurt and disappointment to believe that it’s easier to just give up and stop hoping; we think that if we don’t hope, the disappointments will hurt less. But the fact is, if you look at your future as a road full of bad things to be survived, that’s all you’ll see. You must, as Cheech says, “You gotta believe good things will happen and then they will.”

If you look for the negative, you’ll find it. You’ll attract it. But if you look for the positive, you’ll find that and attract that. Hope is never stupid. Embrace your lost optimism and watch the world start bringing you good stuff again.

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Big love,