After I had written about my melancholy/depression, I allowed that my default position about events is not optimism, but pessimism. My friend Cee had heard the benefits of optimism.
And indeed, if you Google “Is optimism good?” the first thing one might find is this quote from Kids’ Health: ” Optimism Is Healthy. It turns out that an optimistic attitude helps us be happier, more successful, and healthier. Optimism can protect against depression — even for people who are at risk for it. An optimistic outlook makes people more resistant to stress. Optimism may even help people live longer.”
So it’s settled. Wait a minute. The next article is a 2015 piece from the Washington Post stating that “Researchers have found a really good reason not to be an optimist.” It references an NIH study.
That Wapo article: “Optimism isn’t merely unhelpful at times—it can be demonstrably counterproductive. Telling someone ‘you can do it’ when they actually can’t doesn’t change the outcome, and it makes them more likely to exert time and effort on a fruitless task. There might be no clearer example than the fact that optimists spend more time looking for Waldo, but are no more likely to find him.” But the piece allows that pessimism is not curative either.
Ben Franklin
I had mentioned to Cee that I had long been attracted by a portrayal of Ben Franklin, on, of all things Bwitched. His character [said]… that “he always going through life expecting negative outcomes so that when something positive happened, he would be pleasantly surprised. It was a punchline that was supposed to be funny – the canned laughter told me that – but, to me, it made SENSE… ‘Perhaps I’m an optimistic pessimist — prepare for the worst, but when the very worst doesn’t happen, I’m pleasantly surprised.’”
I’m more vulnerable when I’m optimistic. I’m thinking of someone in a particular position who despised the action of a perpetrator, and rightly so. When they were in the same situation as the previous villain, I was optimistic that they, remembering how crummy they felt, would act differently. Nope, they performed the same damn way. As bad as the mess was, it was my optimism that bit me in the butt.
This is why, for instance, I’m not disappointed in politicians anymore. If they end up being better than expected, I’m pleased. But if they have feet of clay, well, what did I expect? I suppose this sounds cynical, but it tends to regulate my highs and lows, which in the main, works for me.
So the fact that I was optimistic that we’d be out of this damn pandemic by now is why I crashed emotionally a bit. This commercial really spoke to me.
Interesting debate Rog. I thought similarly as you have. I usually weigh past results before taking an optimistic or pessimistic view of things. I still feel baseless optimism is not an advantage, it has to be earned At first.
Take care
I have a subtle difference in approach and refer to myself as a “Positive Cynic.” As per the physical law of Entropy, MOST things – including people’s behaviour – tend to fall apart. What can we expect? So when something DOES work out, it’s an occasion for happy happy joy joy, because it beat the Natural Odds.
This is a tricky topic for me. As you can imagine, I’ve received a fair amount of comments made by people who no doubt meant well, but who nevertheless said things that were unhelpful. Turns out, there really is such a thing as “toxic positivity”.
On the other hand, no one I know wants to be Eeyore, so I think most people try to seem at least “not pessimistic”. Most of the time these days, I find it much easier to act optimistic than to be optimistic, but most people hear what they want to hear, so if they notice it’s not genuine, they never say so.