Optimism Is Rational.

I haven’t been the most optimistic person you've ever met. In fact, for a portion of my life I was a pessimist. I remember my parents asking why I was always frowning and my response would be "why should I smile?" Pessimists like to think of themselves as “realists”, but in reality, their view of the world is so dark that what is “real” is just “everything ends up in a bad place”. I understand this view. I’m not the best believer in the world and in the human race. People say there is good in humanity. I say there is both good and bad with many incentives to be bad.

That being said, I may not identify as an optimist yet but a lot of my actions are like one. If there was a spectrum, I’d be somewhere in the middle of being entirely optimistic and being entirely logical. It is situation dependent though. If the other end is pessimism, I sometimes hedge my bets that something bad will happen and hang around the middle of logic and pessimism. That's where a mixture of being "logical" and dealing with anxiety gets you.

But in general, I do think that my actions tend towards being optimistic. I think I have somehow built a reality for myself that a pessimist will say I have no business being in. I try things. I go on unconventional paths. I may struggle to do them. I may try to talk myself out of things. But ultimately, I keep finding myself doing things that can only be done by someone who, at least subconsciously, believes or expects good things to happen.

I have this weird roundabout way of justifying a way of life. You may say it’s good to be an optimist because good things tend to find optimists. Or you may believe in the law of attraction. I, on the other hand, think reality is reality. There’s nothing that’s going to change 2+2 or gravity. But aside from the laws of physics and mathematics, most of our experienced reality is subjective. It’s not real. The thing is the thing. You just interpret it how you want.

That being said, your perspective does shape what you see and by extension, what you pay attention to and notice. The good is there and the bad is there. You focusing on either of them doesn’t negate the other. But it can sometimes stop you from seeing the other. If that’s the case, then it benefits us to be optimistic because only then can the good outcomes become obvious to us and therefore we chase it.

So, logically speaking, it pays to be an optimist. It’s not that the belief in the thing makes the thing happen. The belief in the thing biases you towards action and positioning that makes the thing happen.

“One of the benefits of an optimistic temperament is that it encourages persistence in the face of obstacles.” is a quote from Thinking Fast and Slow. It also reminds me of another quote from Man's Search for Meaning "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." You can't really have a "why" if you don't believe in the possibility of it happening. Things are going to happen that won't go your way. If you have a pessimistic view, your response may be "I was right all along". If you have an optimistic view, your focus is very attached to the good that you may even be able to spin unfavourable things into favourable things.

And then there is energy. When you're in the midst of your own energy, you don't notice it. Pessimists have a way of sucking the joy out of things. It's more draining to be negative. Some things don't have to have a "point". Some things spark joy for no reason, and that's okay.

It also has a repelling effect. I wouldn't want to be around the person who is always seeing how things can go wrong, but never how it can go right. There is value in having your head in the clouds every now and then because you sometimes realise that what you thought was the sky, was just your ceiling. If you never think that you or anyone around you can touch the sky, you won't. And even if you tried regardless, you'd waste so much cognitive energy on negativity.

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right" - Henry Ford

I sometimes identify with nihilism. I do think to a certain extent that everything is vanity and there's no real point to all of this that we call life. But I do have a positive spin on it. If I'm here, and all of this is inherently pointless, I may as well live a life that's not tantamount to suffering. I may zoom out and see how insignificant a lot of things are, but zooming in, I exist, I feel, I experience. Vanity doesn't mean I shouldn't enjoy. In fact, it's a reason why I should enjoy. "If I've been put on this planet without prior consent, I may as well enjoy it," is something I used to say. I don't think I would say that now because I'm in a more gratitude focused state, but the concept still carries over. I'm here. The process to how I got here is irrelevant. I'm here. I may as well enjoy what I can.

And to enjoy what I can, I need to be able to achieve things to make such a reality happen. And now, I can see a straight line from being optimistic to having a higher quality of life. If you can't see it, you can't reach it.

See what I mean about roundabout ways?

As always, I do think there's a balance necessary here. I've seen the damage that extreme optimism can do. Especially belief with no action. "Faith without works is dead", as famously quoted from the Bible. I also think there is prudence in plotting how things can actually go wrong. Life needs objectivity. But the difference here is trying to have a bias to the positive (which will let you aspire), while trying to prepare for things not working out (which protects you from yourself and things you can't see).

That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed it.

See you in the next post.