The Case for Optimism
So many people I talk with these days are disheartened and even in despair about the future. No matter what, they say, there is going to be “blood in the streets.”
I can’t deny that this is possible. Considering everything that’s going on in the world, pessimism seems pretty logical. To all appearances, we’re headed for hell in a handbasket, and if we’d better face the bitter truth, because if we pretend everything is rosy, we’ll just sit on our butts and won’t work for change.
And this may work fine for some people.
For me, however, pessimism just paralyzes me. Because it means giving in to fear, and when I’m afraid, forget doing anything constructive. Fear robs me of energy and faith in myself, and keeps me from thinking clearly, speaking coherently, or doing anything constructive. When I’m pessimistic, I’m such a basket case that I don’t even try to change things. Then the only one who is happy is my ego, who is delighted. “See?” she gloats, “I was right. It couldn’t be done.”
That’s why I remain an optimist and an obstinate believer in “positive thinking.”
I’m not talking about the kind of New Age positive thinking that claims that if you just focus hard enough on what you want, you’ll get it. For me, optimism doesn’t mean selfishly pretending everything is fine when it’s not. On the contrary, it means telling the truth about exactly how bad things are, and then doing whatever I can to change things.
I choose optimism because it both saves my sanity and allows me to act coherently.
The two go together. In order to think, feel, and act with sincere optimism, I have to get in touch with my inner calm — that quiet place I can slip into by being “mindful,” slowing down, paying attention. It’s only from there, when I’m no longer yanked this way and that by fear, that I can look at things from a less frantic perspective and begin to see the situation as it really is. This gives me the energy and mental clarity to respond coherently to whatever situation I find myself in.
It’s in that calm center, too, that I know my optimism is not just wishful thinking. Because it’s in the stillness that I get in touch with something I share with all humanity: our unquenchable caring for life, for each other and for the earth.
I know there’s a small problem with this: namely that certain individuals obviously don’t give a fig about anyone or anything but themselves. I can’t argue with that, although being a sentimentalist, I choose to believe that deep in the breast of even the most atrocious human being, a tiny spark of caring is still feebly burning.
Whatever the truth about that, I’m not talking about individuals here; I’m talking about humanity, and human tendencies. And here even science will bear me out, having shown over and over in recent years that compassion, not competition, is what really drives human evolution.
So even in the face of the cornucopia of disasters we’re currently being blessed with, I insist that we have good reason to be optimistic, both because humans are fundamentally caring, and because optimism is the most practical way to put our caring into practice. Indeed, when it comes to practicality, to getting stuff done, optimism has been shown to be a more effective way to go than pessimism.
As Victor Frankl explains in this wonderful little clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgVA6nXCj1U optimism is what opens the door for good things to happen.
An old Siloist aphorism puts it like this: “Thoughts produce and attract actions.” Far from being magical thinking, this is just simple human mechanics.
Here’s the proof:
- My thoughts affect me, determining how I feel and what I do.
- What I think, feel, and do touches the people around me, affecting what they, in turn, think, feel and do.
- What those people think, feel and do touches the people around them, affecting what they think, feel, and do…
- etc. etc.
In this way my thoughts ripple outward, far beyond me, and really do end up changing the world.
If this is so, why not learn to think the way I really want to think — in a way that will bring positive change to my own life and this world?
Up until recently, I’ve believed what most of us are taught: that fear will protect us, that it’s only prudent common sense. That may be true when a jolt of adrenaline makes me jump out of the way of an oncoming truck. But personally I’ve ended up taking fear way farther than that, and for much of my life fear occupied the throne in my decision-making center.
Even if fear were the most prudent attitude, which I now doubt, it has always been a tyrant, and being its slave has never been fun. A while back I began to wonder if I could somehow escape from that slavery. How much pleasanter if I could learn to think and feel and act not out of fear, but out of some other state — like calm and confidence. Then, maybe, I’d really be able to do something interesting with my life…
So I set about it with a will. It wasn’t easy, especially at first, to change a lifelong habit of fear-based thinking. But I persisted, and can report that I’ve made some progress. And whenever I get discouraged, all I have to do is imagine, for a split second, how it would really be to live entirely free of fear, and I know it’s worth a little work.
Which, in my experience, is all it takes: a little practice. I’m still no Buddha, but I have managed to emerge from the dark ages, and have discovered that, like any useful skill, living optimistically, being guided by positive possibilities instead of by fear, gets easier with practice.
It’s not really that hard. I just go inside myself, to that place of inner calm. When I’m there, in the stillness, my “rational mind” can natter all it wants that peace is impossible, but I can feel that peace inside me, in my heart and in my gut, alive and ready to emerge, like the first tiny blades of grass in springtime — almost too small to see, but firmly rooted, and so tender, so vivid, and so powerfully alive…
So I hold that thought. The more I do that, and the more we all do that together, the more we will open the door to a future of peace and plenitude for all humanity and all life on earth.
On the way there, we will undoubtedly run into plenty of problems. But even in the worst case scenario — blood in the streets, ongoing pestilence, dictatorship, a long dark night of the collective soul — we will be ok as long as we are connected with each other and with our inner stillness, the birthplace of all strength, wisdom, and kindness.
So I recommend optimism. Unless you’re really into masochism, optimism is a lot more fun than pessimism; and I believe it truly is our only hope for changing things for the better.
Whatever happens, whatever tragedies we still have to endure, I affirm without reservation that we are moving toward a great human awakening, and that all the negative forces, appalling and terrifying though they may be, are simply the necessary catalysts for that awakening.
