The Pitfalls of Being an Optimist

The utmost maddening aspect of life is that it always gets better. There are always happy moments on the horizon, love just around the corner, good memories waiting to be made, and never, ever a permanent sadness. This realization is the biggest tragedy in the pits of sorrow. Knowing that all you can do is sit through it, wait it out, perhaps work it out, but knowing that things will become sounder leaves you to ruminate on the questions: When, and why not now? How long do I have to wait in order for things to return to normal, and is it even worth the time, the energy, and the grief I will be forced to live through? Things will get better, but not now, and that truth is utterly bleak. 

My outlook on life has not always been unconditionally positive– even still, it falters. I spent my early teenage years the same way as most, dwelling in my angst and questioning everything the world had to offer. While pessimism isn’t inherently juvenile, mine certainly was. I hated my life, my school, and myself, and while I had experienced hardship in my childhood, I wasn’t old enough to fully understand how difficult things could get, or even how bad things had been. My optimism only emerged after a long period in which my mental health was deteriorating. I discovered then how desperate I was to live, fully and completely. After two years of healing, I was finally able to feel the joy that I yearned for and worked tirelessly to achieve. Albeit healing isn’t linear. I would backslide in my mental health journey, and all I could think about were the happy times that I had experienced just weeks, or even days before. I was starving for those joyous moments, the ones I knew would come again. But my hunger for these times couldn’t be satiated, at least not then. In those moments, it seems as though all you can do is sit in the pain you feel, until you don’t feel it any longer. But despising your sadness is an optimist’s comedy of errors. 

When the optimist is faced with external or internal circumstances that turn hopefulness into an itch that can’t be scratched, a thing you can’t quite pin down, a pull towards pessimism might be felt. But it’s Shakespearean how, to an inherent optimist, it is never in full throttle. Pessimism would be easier. There is a level of acceptance of the bleak present, a sort of, “this is just how things are” mindset. But on the flip side, one could see pessimism as a form of escape, a permanent acceptance of something intrinsically temporary. Emotions will ebb and flow, and while sadness may be inevitable, so is happiness, and that is what a dreamer will wait for (though perhaps too furiously). 

The most uncomfortable thing to sit in is heartache, dejection, and upset, but even so, listen to your favorite forlorn song, journal about your adverse feelings; live inside your sadness, and eventually, you will outgrow it. To be an optimist is not to refuse the negative, but to have hope that there is a reason for it.