We live in a world meant for optimists. Sounds silly, right? When the word optimism comes up, images pop into the mind of naive, air-headed dreamers. Optimists sit around all day, thinking up ways to make cotton candy taste better. The world is a rough place, isn't it? At least, pessimists get important work done, right? But if you had to sit and eat lunch at work with one or the other, a pessimist or an optimist, which would you chose?
Please, tell me that hearing someone complain for a half hour would thrill you. Get you motivated to work with a good attitude and move toward a common goal with your fellow man. Tell me it doesn't bother you to sit through a half-hour moan and groan, "woe is me, woe is me!" session by the same person every day. Please, do tell.
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Optimists, people with positive attitudes and glasses half-full, are the ones others want to be around and listen to--optimists provide a laugh, a compliment, and a word of encouragement to those who need it, where a cynic might simply press their negativity on those already hurting. Pessimists claim to see the world for how it is: a cruel, unforgiving place, cold and heartless, the only escape from which is death. And sometimes, they're right.
Let's say that an optimist and a pessimist have to climb for half a mile up a frozen mountain to get to their ski lodge. The pessimist would complain about the cold like this: "Ugh, I'm so cold, I'll freeze to death if I don't get inside soon!" The optimist would complain with a laugh: "Whoo! That's brisk, isn't it? I bet there's hot cocoa inside!"
See the difference? One thinks about death, and the other thinks about hot chocolate. And yes, the pessimist is right; if they don't get inside in the next few hours, they'll be frostbitten from head to toe. The positive side is that, as the optimist believes, it is indeed cold enough outside to drink hot cocoa. The pessimist is motivated by the cold to get inside quickly. The optimist is motivated by the hope of a treat. And once this hypothetical duo get inside, if there is no hot cocoa, the pessimist complains about that and throws it in the optimist's face, while the optimist is more than happy just with the warmth of the indoors.
That being said, optimists aren't always wrong and full of wishful thinking. "Happy" and "naive" are not synonyms, nor are "happy" and "stupid." Optimists can see the truth just as well as the pessimists can; they, however, prefer to look at what is good and what can be accomplished rather than sit there and whine about what's in the way. Stress can be a great motivator to get something done--love is even better. It's harder to get through the day with a negative attitude than with a positive one. Why go through heck and cry, when you can shove it in heck's face and smile along the way?
An angry voice can only change the world if it presents words of hope for the future. The people at the top are greedy? We can elect new ones. Children in Africa are starving and in failing health? There are teams of doctors and missionaries risking their own lives to help them. Not one president gets elected by saying that the world will be awful forever. They come with promises of change, and though many fail and some don't even try, there are those in power who have done good for humanity. Some have lived up to their promises. And we can hope that they will again.
Everyone wants happiness in life. That's the American Dream, after all. Optimists see the happiness in every situation. Even if life beats the smile away for a while, it always bounces back, because it's not just a personality trait; optimism is a way to choose to see the world. Optimists train themselves to choose to see life that way each day--and they're much happier for it.
