Sunday, January 07, 2007

Optimism

I feel full of optimism at the moment. I am generally quite optimistic anyway. Sometimes, I am hopelessly optimistic about things. It can be a good thing, but it can cause chaos, particularly to those around me. For example, I can underestimate how long things will take to complete, I sometimes leave home without directions to places I need to visit, I generally think everything will be OK and sometimes it isn't and I know this can be difficult for the ones I care deeply about.

But the way I look at it is, there's no point being pesimistic, or at least overly pesimistic and I know the realists will be saying, you ought to be realistic, and maybe they're are right (but I don't actually think they are, I'm just being polite). Some people have said that I delude myself a bit by being optimistic, again, perhaps they're right, but then you must delude yourself a bit by being pesimistic too.

If you imagine the outcome is going to be negative then you won't even try and maybe that's exactly the right decision, I'm not suggesting being foolish or reckless. But, most everday decisions aren't that significant and if you can imagine the outcome being positive then you're more likely to have a bash. It might be OK, then if it is, great and if it isn't try something else. I know this doesn't work for all aspects of life.

I have learned to be more sensible. I arrive on time more often than not, I take a map with me and I think that things will take as long as they take - except for slow cooking pots, which take forever - how do they manage to cook things so slowly! And isn't really worth the energy it comsumed. But I did think when I put it on that it would be quicker and taste better...

5 comments:

Alec said...

Being unrealistically optimistic may have consequences for those around you, but so does pessimism. It drains energy insidiously and makes people unhappy, often without them noticing.

Optimism is therefore much, much better.

tone the blueshawk said...

I think I'm pretty optimistic - certainly when I was younger I pretty much always thought things would turn out for the best (and they mostly did).
We (Pen and my son's and I) went thru a period when something difficult seemed to happen every few days - it became impossible for us to believe that good things would happen. I'm glad to say we/I don't feel that way too often these days... Txxx

purkul said...

hya,

optamism! gr8 stuff. i think its a fab mind set to have. i tend to sit on the 'realist' side of the fence automatically and to be honest i think it takes a lot of fun out of things! i reakon the result in the end, & whether you were right or not in thinking something would work isn't the point. the point is that you believe in things, and thats half the battle. & 4 the record as far as people you care about go, i'd of thought the fact that you believe in them is compensation enough for occaisionally being slightly over optomistic!

purkul
x

emma said...

Hope so - thanx for the comments.

Domenica said...

I much prefer to see a glass as half-full than half-empty, the universe has a tendency to give us what we think about. If we change the way we look at things,the things we look at will change.