Perspectives

In my teenage years, I was, without a doubt, a pessimist. Thankfully though, I also considered myself an idealist. This seems like a contradiction, but isn’t. When I use the term “pessimist” I mainly mean a lack of hope that things in the here and now will turn out to be good. By being an idealist, I believed that though things will inevitably fail for me in the short-run, things will be okay in the long-run.

In other words, I didn’t expect to win many battles, but in the long run I believed that the war would be won.

At least I wasn’t a pessimist and a nihilist: believing that I’d lose both the battle and the war. 

I want to focus on the pessimism aspect and juxtapose it with its opposite, optimism.  Which one is better?

People who think about perspectives from all different angles (like I try to be) seem to me to find more circumstances to make them unhappy. A lot of times, being too intellectual causes a person to become cold and lose hope in others and in the future. I think that is what happened to me.

It’s understandable too; right before my teenage years I learned that I would eventually lose my ability to walk. Being a typical pre-teen, my goal was to just “fit in” with the other kids my age. With this information, I believed that goal would be impossible.

Therefore, the future changed for me: instead of anticipating a land of unknown possibilities, it became more like dreading an inevitable death sentence. Maybe melodramatic, reading that now, but adolescence is a time for melodrama, I guess.

As a duck with clipped wings gets accustomed to life on the ground, I settled into my pessimism. For most people, noticing this from an outside perspective, it was the unfortunate but expected consequence of my circumstances: I surprised no one by retreating into pessimism. However, those closest to me (my family mainly) tried to halt my descent into a constantly gray-scaled view.

When they tried to talk to me about it, being concerned in my well-being, I did not make it easy for them to talk me out of my pessimism.

I countered any “Why don’t you be more positive?” type question with a response that with negativity as my constant outlook, I am never disappointed when things don’t turn out my way. I questioned why I should bother hoping for something good when I could get disappointed; so instead I should prepare myself for the worst-case-scenario.

And no one really had an answer for that, so they shook their heads and hoped that one day I’d see differently.

Nowadays, I consider myself more of an optimist than a pessimist. And I would like to counter the point made by me as a teenager.

Teenage me- you can’t always be negative and pessimistic quite simply because that is not the way humans are wired. Think of yourself: do you like to be around people who consistently bring you down? Why is that? I think it’s because hardwired into our human nature is the longing for hope. You can deny that it’s hardwired into us, but you can’t deny that you like to be around positive people. Make yourself become someone you’d want to be around.

Oh, and as for your never get disappointed claim. It’s b.s. You won’t ever get more disappoint over things you expected to turn out badly, but your entire perspective is one of disappointment. Instead of eliminating disappointment with your pessimism, you are living your life in constant disappointment. And, buddy, only you can alter that.

Hopefully that would get through to me. In my life thus far, I’ve discovered that optimism is no more accurate than pessimism – life is a see-saw of joy and pain – but choosing one or the other only affects you as a person. Choose the outlook that is most beneficial to who you want to be.

After all, the glass doesn’t have different amounts whether you see it as half-full or half-empty. The only difference is the attitude of the person.

Whether you consider yourself an optimist, a pessimist, an idealist, a nihilist, a sophist, a fundamentalist, an existentialist, a secularist, a Sunkist, a Sierra Mist, or a few or none, I hope your glass always is full enough.