I Am The Rational Optimist

[Dagorath]

Warning: There are no questions here. This is a claim and a thesis I wrote. Read it if you want to know how I think and follow my rhetoric.

 

This is the optimism that will feed happiness - because it is not the icing on the cake. It's not even the cake - it's the joy of making the cake.

 

It is such a normal human reaction to feign optimism in light of despair and loss. Sadly, it is more of a cry for help and I know too much to engage this train of thinking so readily. Often I find that these optimistic souls who insist on projecting and announcing their happiness the world, are the most miserable of all. I was talking to someone struggling with their life one time and they said to me, "I am so angry, I think I was born angry." I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. No one is born angry, nor is anyone destined to be unhappy. All of these emotional states are responses. It is a cause and effect world. If we are unhappy, or angry, or sad, the key to resolution is not to pretend and overcompensate with a smile. Nor is it to avoid the issue with apathy. It is to face the emotion, and find its source through rigorous self-analysis. Our first step must be to accept and admit that we are hurting. To accept that our ship has a hole in it. Our second step must be to talk to people and think on the wisdom their experiences have granted them and find out how to fix the hole. Once we find the source, we can overcome it with a rational optimism fed by progress and self-esteem - the very antithesis of saddened, angry, unhappy states. We fix the hole, and keep paddling onwards. Tragedy is like being in a boat that starts to sink. When have no idea where the water is coming from, we're just trying to bail water out of a boat with a hole in the bottom. Fix the hole first; then clear out the water.

 

I've long thought that optimism was futile and ignorant, because in essence, I assumed that optimistic people were just masking their issues. I've started to wonder lately, if perhaps it is just a natural method of coping with distress. They say time heals all wounds and it does so by decaying the power and prevalence of memories. We are constructs of our memories and experiences. What we choose to remember and hold on to defines us as people. Without that, every day would be a clean slate, and humanity would be a horde of robots. Most optimistic people are trying desperately to look forward instead of backwards and just pretending things are ok until the emotions subside. It is the same as paddling with all of our might for a shoreline we cannot see while our boat begins to sink. It is not impossible, but it slows our progress and hinders our future. It is a terrible strategy; however, most optimists are not optimists by choice, but rather by consequence and a necessity to cope with distress. As a result, they do not understand the futility of trying to ignore their past while unknowingly clinging to it. Doing so, creates an anchor. I meet optimists every day who tell me that they have no regrets. I find this statement incredibly foolish. A person who does not regret their past is saying in essence, "I have found no reason to change the way I operate." It is a confession of a dreadful state of stagnancy.

 

Of course my method was that of pessimism. I chose to look backwards and be overly critical. I chose to tear myself apart with guilt, regret, blame, and the self-doubt which arises as a result. I chose to dwell and sulk on things I could never change. As a result, I stumbled backwards falling over the present, and sabotaging my future. The truth is - optimism is a strength. We just have to know how to use it and make sure we are still resolving the past before we try to move on from it. What does that mean? Facing tragedy. It means coming to a conclusion by choice. It means ending what has created strife instead of maintaining a foolish perseverance out of misled hope. It means leaving behind, what should be left behind - even if it hurts to do so. Resolve comes not from hiding from the past or burying it but from the task of ensuring it will not repeat in the future.

 

The truth is that most people feel that they are ****ed up inside. If you want to know the greatest secret of all, it is that the more personal a problem, the more prolific it is among people. Everything we think we are alone in, other people are dealing with as well. Nothing is stupid, and often it resembles almost exactly what others are feeling. This is why when we open up, we start to see that we aren't so ****ed up. Once we can stop beating ourselves up, we can find a way out of our self-loathing. Trust me, I have been self loathing for a long time, but I'm trying to change that now and to see a more optimistic side to things. The best therapy in life is other people who will be blunt and honest and not just tell us what we want to hear. Most people feel stupid for sharing with others, and rightfully so, since others typically respond with baseless statements such as, "suggesting they are better off, or that they will find something else." This is the same exact methodology as saying, "Keep paddling, you'll find a shoreline someday," in a sinking boat that is weighing us down. What is required is truly objective individuals, family, and friends who will love us, and not be afraid to tell us the truth. If we can't find these people or they are blinded by compassion, then we must find strangers to confide in. Often we will find, their experiences are not so foreign.

 

Opening up has another strength, and that is that it allows us to ground our assumed value in things. It seems overly simplistic to ask a person what they really like about the person they claim to love, but as people are terrible at measuring the determining the value of things. We skew value, especially in the short term, and assume it is more valuable than it actually is. The greatest risk in love is that we fall in love with the idea of something, rather than what it actually is. There is an objective reality, and I know this because so often we all share similar experiences which feed universal truths with very rare exceptions. When we open up to people, they can help to ground an unhealthy or baseless infatuation.

 

The flip side of a baseless infatuation is those who run from love out of fear, because of their pasts. I know this state all too well. The past can destroy the future, but only if we let it by not facing it. Often as people, when we are confronted by a feeling of love, we become uneasy. We reference past emotional states, and the resolution which came from them. We assume we are lying to ourselves or that the entire equation will fall though, and so we run from it. This is often a state rendered by remembering hurt, or feeling foolish for having loved someone who did not love the same. It is clinging to a past unreconciled.

 

I think one difficulty in love is that you never know how the other side feels. To fall in love we first have to be willing to fall. When we take that leap, we never know if the other person is going to jump with us and nothing is as terrible as feeling like you are falling alone and jumped for no reason. As a result, we are often afraid of falling in love too soon. Our generation has stigmatized love to be so mysterious and powerful that we don't know what it is or how to find it. We feel like it is this dangerous double-edged sword that is going to cut us wide open again. So everything is peachy at first and we run when we see the "L" word because we're afraid of the pain. We are afraid of the memories.

 

My methodology, because I am arrogant, has been to define love for myself in a way that makes sense. It is not enough to say, "No one can define love." Well then what are we looking for?! That is like saying, "Hey help me look for this."... "What does it look like?" ... "I have no idea." It is true that there is a subjective element to love, but there is also an objective truth. If there weren't, we would not all fall the same way - but we do, don't we? As a man of and by my own definition; of and by my own volition - I have my own definition for love. The problem with people is that they have no definition of this value, or any others. As a result they have no conviction to stick to their own values, or as in many cases with younger generations; they have no values at all.

 

So we go through life in this haze of gray, never knowing what love is, or what we are trying to get out of it. Riding on the very emotions we run from out of fear and interjecting distorted logic where we find it necessary. We ride on baseless assumptions that our reasoning is sound - despite what others have to say. We seclude our minds into a tunnel vision which inevitably collapses in on us. We don't know what love is, but we know we want it. We want to fight for the idea, or for something that we cherish - but we can't. We can't control it. We have to accept the humility of defeat instead of fighting for a contradiction. As a famous quote by Marilyn vos Savant says, "Defeat is almost always temporary, it is the giving up that makes it permanent." In regards to this equation, leaving pain and failure in the past permanently is the best thing we can do for ourselves. In this case, the giving up means; giving up on a foolish notion - giving up on the contradiction. A contradiction which has proven itself already by delivering pain. When I say contradiction I mean that it is contradictory to our well-being and happiness.

 

Ayn Rand says, "The man who pursues a contradiction will inevitably destroy himself." While her outlook is often austere and devoid of feeling - there is some manner of truth in this. Love is not contradictory; the search for an illusionary past is. As George Blevins explains, "Searching for a past that never existed is like putting out a missing persons report on an imaginary friend." The truth is that love is never pathetic. What is pathetic is to run from emotions, and to run from love. What is pathetic is to avoid reason, and find reasons to hang on to the past and dwell on it- thereby destroying the future. Emotions are not weakness, the cowardice which comes from hiding from our emotions is weakness.

So what do we do, and how do we resolve the past? If blinded optimism is not the answer, and pessimism leads to despair, how do we find the way out? We pursue a rational optimism. When we are confronted with distress from our past and our memories, we have to find the right way to cope. Accept the pain. Let it bleed. Don't be afraid to be sad in front of others. They will come to our aid. Accept the terms of love: That we never truly belong to one another - merely we meet each other by chance and share time and emotions together; and as such, we are never allowed to stop trying. That we cannot change a person's thinking, or their actions, but we can change ourselves and what we choose to remember. That we have to just take it, and find our way through the sadness by owning it. In time the pain will fade; as much as that sucks to know, it is for the best.

 

We can't tease and taunt ourselves. Don't keep pictures readily visible. Don't go to their Facebook page. Try not to think of a future with them, and when we do, try to change the subject. When we catch ourselves reading old texts and looking at old pictures - we have to stop. Accept that there is nothing wrong with being alone. We all go our own way - we are born and die alone. The worst part of the pain is the memory of what it was - not the reality of what it is. Stop the memory, because we can't change the reality. The delusion of thinking we can change reality itself only feeds and compounds the issue. Reality is absolute, we within it, and our perceptions of it are not. Open up to others, they will help us get through it by distracting us from it - as terrible as that sounds. The love and compassion of others is what heals the wound because it allows the memories to fade. The worst thing in the world is to be alone thinking about the past, trust me; I know.

 

Step one is always acceptance. We can't overcompensate by telling ourselves we are happy, or by sugar coating things. We can't be afraid to NOT smile. We can't be afraid to show people that we are hurting. We can't be afraid to be sad - we deserve to be... Love is powerful and can be difficult to lose. But never forget the future is ours. Think of what we can gain - not of what we are losing; even if that is the most difficult task. Romanticize the future, not the past.

 

The secret to making optimism work is to make it a choice, because optimism is a cyclical process and a lens by which to see life which can greatly better our lives. It is our drive, and our hope. We can't just choose to be happy in light of tragedy, but what we can do is to see a silver lining despite the pain. In a world of shadow we can see the spec of light. And when we focus on that light, and let it give us hope, we can start to do things that make us feel better about our lives. Hope is only foolish when it contradicts reason; for that which cannot be known or reasoned, always have hope. We can change things, and try something new. We can open up, we can fix things we don't like about ourselves. With every new success, we will become happier and more optimistic - it is circular. Success gives us value, and value gives us happiness. Happiness feeds success, which gives more value, and more happiness over and over as we climb upwards in life. Value gives us self-esteem and allows us to venture out when we are afraid, and find those worthy of our love. Love is based on value. The value we see in ourselves as reflected by a person of value who loves us back - this is the happiness love brings.

Find a catalyst for change, chase it, and get it. Even if it seems stupid; set a goal - no matter how arbitrary. We can tell ourselves that we are going to learn Spanish, and work towards it. We can buy a program, buy a book, and practice. When in three months we are spitting out sentences in Spanish, we will feel accomplished and that feeling of progress will give us back some value and self-esteem the memories of our past took away. They will confirm to us that we have changed, that we can change, and that we will not repeat the past - that we don't need to keep going back to it in search of a happiness that was once lost.

 

This is the optimism that will feed happiness - because it is not the icing on the cake. It's not even the cake - it's the joy of making the cake.

 

I come to these conclusions for myself, but also for others. I am not perfect, or infinitely wise. I'm critical and I analyze everything. Academically, it is a strength. In relationships it has been a vice because others do not share my notions that we can figure out whatever we choose to. Others want to be swept along in a current and they just want to be where other people are in the current so they can feel some normalcy in the stupor of chaos and fear. They don't care where the river is going, or why they are in the river in the first place. They don't care to swim, or see what's on the shore line. They might be afraid, indifferent, or oblivious of the choice to do so. The thing is, I do. I am maddeningly, disastrously, enigmatically captivated by what is on the shore, and whether I can swim - whether I can control the fate of my own journey. Life is the river, and it is full of obstacles, difficulties and emotions which make life challenging and unbearable at times. The water is time itself and the reality of a fleeting beautiful world. Our sense, our minds, and our emotions are ways of maneuvering in the torrent of difficulty that is life. The more in tune we become with all three, the better our journey will be. That is the goal of the rational optimist.

 

If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, "You think too much," I would be a wealthy man. My response historically was guilt and I tried to oppress my thoughts, believing that simplicity was a better path. But I have relinquished that notion. I define my world, it does not define me. I define my past, I do not allow it to define me. I define it by facing it, and by finding a resolution which coincides with logic - not with delusion or imagination. Others say I think too much; I say they think too little. They say I feel too much; I say they feel too little. They say I fall in love too easily; I say they run from love too readily. I have thought on my past and I am learning how to reconcile a present since it inevitably becomes the past. I have brought myself from the depths of despair through this very system and I have known the depths of pessimism, and the illusions of optimism. I have known defeat, and I have known victory. I have known love and I have known hate. I have known sadness, and I have known a happiness. I have known light, and I have known shadow. I am the rational optimist.