Why Be an Optimist When the World Tells Us Opposite?
Before I start this post, I just want to take a moment to be honest about what has been going on lately. You may have realized I haven’t posted in two weeks. The truth of the matter is that I felt the need to crank out post after post in order to grow my blog. Everything that I read in order to “Improve Your Blog and Make It Get a Lot of Traffic/Publicity!!” said that posting regularly was the key. Yet, it came to the point that I was producing quantity over quality. It felt like there was no true substance in my writing for a point in time. I felt the pressure to produce these pieces of writing in order to keep my blog growing that I forgot why I was doing this in the first place. I forgot who I was writing to and for- those like me who fight each and every day against their minds yet can’t necessarily control what goes on in them. They can only control how they respond to those thoughts. Just like I say, we can’t cure our mental illnesses. As horrible of an analogy as this is: it’s like asthma (as ironic as it is, I actually have asthma too). It can’t be cured. It can be treated.
Along with changes I am making, I am going to write how I want to write. There will be incomplete sentences, some without a subject or verb, a continuation of the last sentence but start of a new one to get the point across, a sentence starting with But or And, and the overuse of commas that it annoys or sickens you. I’d just like to say to my old high school English teacher, “I am sorry for possibly making you cringe at the sight of this. Yet, please know that I do remember how to properly write. But, this is my place to write how I want to write which will parallel how I talk.” So here I am hoping to give you a piece of writing that has substance, meaning, and matter. Please leave a comment or like and tell me what you think. Feedback helps more than you know. Here it goes:
optimist /ˈäptəməst/ noun
1. a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something
2. a person who believes that good must ultimately prevail over evil
I believe there lies an optimist in all of us. It may be bigger or even smaller than others, but it is still there inside of us. A prime example is the Grinch! Why do I believe this? We, as a human race, all have a sense of hope. We have something that keeps us living, motivating, pursuing. It may be just one little glimmer of hope, but it is still hope. Hope is a positive thing. Cliche: it is the light at the end of the tunnel.
It is so easy for those who struggle with mental illness to be pessimists. I mean our minds are practically saying, “YOU SUCK. YOU DESERVE THIS. YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING. ETC. ETC.” That’s a real Debbie Downer for everyone- depressed or not. Our minds, in essence, tell us the negatives in life. We forget to develop the film into color and positives. Everything seems to shift from color to a hazy grey. To go along with that, the world isn’t doing anyone any favors. Most people can attest to that (most, not everyone because that is a cognitive distortion.) We see poverty, greed, hunger, natural disasters, terrorism, mass violence, racism, sexism and misogyny, homophobia, cruelty, and ignorance (and the list goes on) happening in the world today. The society and world are projected in a negative trajectory because of the media, magazines, advertisements, television, music, art, etc. content that is put out there. It is shaping the youth of today into a negative slant downward instead of inspiring them to chase after their dreams, which are more often attainable than “unrealistic” as told from seemingly everyone around us. Our natural response is to be pessimists and look at how bad the state of our world is in. Almost everything seems to be going wrong at each turn we make. There is hatred, selfishness/self-absorption, and lack of gratitude all around us. We often display it the most even when we try to pretend otherwise.
First, we need to admit our faults. Secondly, we must then own up to them. Thirdly, we need to amend our wrongs, truly commit to changing, and acknowledge who we are and what we can become. Next, we need to fight our natural urges because those urges are usually wanting us to act in a sinful, backward manner. There are a numerous amount of urges we incline towards. One of those natural urges would be to look at everything in a tinted view (aka be pessimistic). We need to go against what the world pushes us towards. In other words, we need to follow what Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- His good, pleasing, and perfect will.”
Pessimism is such an easy desire and answer in this life. The questions are: Does it make you feel any better? Does it help you? Personally, it makes me feel so much worse. It leads me to a deep rut of depression, self-loathing, and worthlessness. It is certainly easier to not put yourself up for failure. To not make expectations. But the consequence of that is I never try, grow, stretch, or succeed. My joy becomes stagnant. Through problems and achieving those problems, we find joy. I know that sounds weird since we are told our whole lives that if we are successful with a nice car, big house, good job and family then we will be happy. Yet, I’m here to say that is not the case at all. You may appear dollars and achievements and standards met successful on paper, but you may not be truly happy in real life. Jim Carrey says, “I wish everyone could become rich and famous so they could realize it is not the answer.” There are millionaires who seem to be as successful as it gets with all they could possibly want. But at the end of the day, they are not joyful. People with almost nothing can be happier than those millionaires because they placed their values on the right things in life. They then measured those values properly, placing their priorities on what mattered most. P.s. I further established these perspectives through the resources “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson and “Minimalism: a Documentary about the Important Things.” I recommend you check them out.
I’ve recently gotten into self-help books like “You are a Badass”, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”, “You Do You”, and “Happier” (the best and most helpful one which is grounded in positive psychology by a professor at Harvard) because they are so bluntly honest and introspective. That is so RARE to find in the culture we live in. Also because they are insanely funny. I used think they seemed like you were desperate and pathetic for reading them. I’ve realized I don’t need to care what others think about me or how I’m living my life. Plus, I’m doing something with my life when I know it’s not 100% the way I want and that I can do something about it. That’s more than what a lot of others can say. One thing I’ve noticed is that the authors all say it’s okay to be a pessimist. That is the thing I do not agree with. My view is this: it’s okay to not always be 112% positive all day every day because that’s not realistic. Life is hard. Things go wrong. Bad stuff happens. My chemistry teacher used to say that it’s okay to feel what you are feeling. I think the point he was getting across was that it is okay to feel. You do not want close yourself off from feeling since that is no way to live. It is better to live with pain and know that you feel something than not. We need to be realistic optimists. I believe living more optimistic than pessimistic benefits you much, much more.
My dad gave me an issue of TIME magazine called “The Optimists”. Some of the most remarkable, inspiring people of today wrote in it. Those include Warren Buffett, Malala Yousafzai, John Lewis, Ava Duvernay, Trevor Noah, Laurene Powell Jobs, Marcus Samuelsson, Bono, Melinda Gates, and more. The note from the first-ever guest editor Bill Gates said:
“Reading the news today does not exactly leave you feeling optimistic. Hurricanes in the Americas. Horrific mass shootings. Global tensions over nuclear arms, crisis in Myanmar, bloody civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Your heart breaks for every person who is touched by these tragedies. Even for those of us lucky enough not to be directly affected, it may feel like the world is falling apart.
But these events- as awful as they are- have happened in the context of a bigger, positive trend. On the whole, the world is getting better.
This is not some naively optimistic view; it’s backed by data. Look at the number of children who die before their fifth birthday. Since 1990, that figure has been cut in half. That means 122 million children have been saved in a quarter-century, and countless families have been spared the heartbreak of losing a child.
And that’s just one measure. In 1990, more than a third of the global population lived in extreme poverty; today only about a tenth do. A century ago, it was legal to be gay in about 20 countries; today it’s legal in over 100 countries. Women are gaining political power and now make up more than a fifth of members of national parliaments— and the world is finally starting to listen when women speak up about sexual assault. More than 90% of all children in the world attend primary school. In the U.S., you are far less likely to die on the job or in a car than your grandparents were. And so on.
I’m not trying to downplay the work that remains. Being an optimist doesn’t mean you ignore tragedy and injustice. It means you’re inspired to look for people making progress on those fronts, and to help spread that progress more widely. If you’re shocked by the idea of millions of children dying, you ask: Who is good at saving kids, and how can we help them do more? (This is essentially why Melinda and I started our foundation.)
So why does it feel like the world is in decline? I think it is partly the nature of news coverage. Bad news arrives as drama, while good news is incremental– and not usually deemed newsworthy. A video of a building on fire generates lots of views, but not many people would click the headline “Fewer buildings burned down this year.” It’s human nature to zero in on threats: evolution wired us to worry about the animals that want to eat us.
There’s also a growing gap between the bad things that still happen and our tolerance of those things. Over the centuries, violence has declined dramatically, as has our willingness to accept it. But because the improvements don’t keep pace with our expectations, it can seem like things are getting worse.
To some extent, it is good that bad news gets attention. If you want to improve the world, you need something to be mad about. But it has to be balanced by upsides. When you see good things happening, you can channel your energy into driving even more progress.
That is what I hope you will take from this issue of TIME. I’ve asked some of the people I respect most to write about what makes them optimistic. You’ll learn surprising facts about the state of the world, and you’ll meet heroes who save lives every day. It’s a crash course in why and how the world is improving. I hope you’ll be inspired to make it even better.”
Man, Bill Gates is one wise fellow. I mean he summed it up more adequately than I ever could. I just want to make it a point that I can be optimistic because there is progress and I have been given a life with deliberation. As have all of you. Through this deliberation, we can serve a purpose for good. We can focus on improving life than seeing how the world wants us to see: the bad. Therefore, I am an optimist. I am a dreamer. I am a visionary. I dream big with God. The question is: Will you?
