Naive Hope

“I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”


This was my senior quote in high school. I’m not sure why I picked it; it seemed kind of cheesy and  blindly optimistic to my brooding and sulking-ish eighteen-year-old self. I couldn’t quite shake it though – the belief that all things, no matter how bad they seem at present, will work for the best in the future. 


Seems kind of contradictory, thinking about it. I’m a big believer in accepting reality as it is NOW. I believe things will work for good in the future, but I think a person needs to live in the moment and feel all it has to offer – its depths of pain or its peaks of joy – and to put all your positive thoughts in an imagined future is kind of naive (or, if you want to get technical, the sin of presumption) to me. 


So between this rock of hoping and this hard place of not making the future my only hope is where I find myself. (Contradiction or paradox? I hope for the latter.) I identify with the term idealist. That term, to me, identifies me more accurately than the term optimist.


Today, someone told me that even though they wanted X to happen, there was no shot of it ever happening. I told that that line of thinking was defeatist. He told me it was that of a realist.


Yes, I’m using -ists a lot, like in my last post. No, this is not going to be a constant theme on my blog, but I do think it’s important to think about.


Something deep within my personhood, maybe childish and naive, but even if so, recognizing that as irrelevant, screams that the “realistic” stance mentioned is the wrong one to have.


I know from experience that taking risks is somewhat opposed to most people’s realistic philosophies. If odds tell me that failure is likely and I pride myself on being a cautious and safe individual, I can easily see me not putting hope in any longshot or underdog and hiding my lack of hope behind the phrase “I am a realist.”


There isn’t even anything morally wrong with that; coasting by on statistics and outcomes seems to work well for some people.


However, it doesn’t work well for me.


Moreover, every fiber of me screams that the philosophy is missing something fundamental.


I tend to make these blog entries rather black and white, but I see a bit of myself in both categories. In my day-to-day encounters, am I more of a rationalist or a dreamer. Am I okay with that? Which is better?


At the end of the day, my outlook doesn’t measure the world for me; it doesn’t make things easier or more difficult. Life comes at me statically, no matter if I hope or fear what it will bring. What outlooks do is color the world for us.


I hope you choose a good color scheme.