Thoughts on Optimism
When launching this project, I was worried about balancing that fine line between projecting positivity and encouragement and projecting denial of the real challenges in the world or naiveté about what it takes to solve them.
Thus, as I am known to do, I hopped over to dictionary.com (my 3,000,000th open tab for the day) and looked up optimism. The first definition is:
a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome. (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/optimism)
Okay…I needed to let that sink in. It’s not like I’m a Negative Ninny or anything, but I think anyone who knows me would say that I have a serious cynical streak, passed down through generations of born-and-bred Chicagoans. On its own, my fluency in sarcasm essentially prohibits me from expecting “the most favorable outcome” in a given situation, right?
So what does that mean for me? And for this project? I sat down with two friends, one a self-defined pessimist, the other the very image of optimism. Both are funny, happy, likable, kind…and both are fiercely dedicated to living out the changes they want to see in the world.
Unexpectedly, Madame Pessimist does not see problems as insurmountable or herself as destined to fail. Nor does Lady Optimist view problems as non-existent, non-issues that will solve themselves in the end. Both have a healthy awareness that they need to dig in and do the work to create the world they want, and both believe that it can be achieved.
As we talked, occurred to me, I’ve been looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe optimism doesn’t always have to mean believing in unconditional smooth sailing and success. There will be bumps in the road, we can’t deny that. There will be times that everything feels TOO BIG and we will question the point of putting in the work.
Maybe optimism IN ACTION can mean believing that, when faced with challenges, we will work creatively to solve them. We will stumble. The question to the optimist becomes not WILL we get back up, but WHEN will we get up, and WHAT will we do then?
In that way, maybe we can all become optimists.
