Optimism is a choice. It is choosing to see the good in things. When it rains you might think negatively: “Oh man, now I have to take my laundry off the clothesline,” or you might think positively: “Hey, now I don’t have to water the plants!” Make a conscious effort to see the good in a situation and you will feel better about yourself, other people, and life in general. It will be harder to get you down. And it will lead you to other positive possibilities. As Mitchell Parish wrote and Ella Fitzgerald sang, “Clouds in the sky should never make you feel that way.”
They say that pessimists see the glass as half empty while optimists see the glass as half full. But that image doesn’t convey just how different the two approaches are. It gives us the sense that both the optimist and pessimist are looking at the same thing—a half of a glass of water—and describing it in slightly different ways. It makes it sounds like it’s a situation of having six of one and a half dozen of the other. It makes it sound like there’s not much difference between the two viewpoints. But the difference is like night and day. When optimists and pessimists look at the very same thing, they see two very different things. When they look at a half a glass of water, the optimist is looking at the water; the pessimist is looking at the air. Water is very different from air. Where the optimist sees something, the pessimist sees nothing. The level of water doesn’t have to be at the halfway point for these two opposing viewpoints to both be possible. The image of a half a glass of water almost suggests that if it were 51% full, then we would teeter over to optimism and if it were only 49% full, then we would totter back to pessimism. But that’s not how it is. The glass could be 1% full and we could be optimistic. Optimism is seeing the good that is there and focusing on it.
A better illustration of the differences between optimists and pessimists would be this: When you give some sugar, some lemons, and some water to a pessimist, they will complain that the sugar is dry, the lemons are bitter, and the water is plain. When you give the same ingredients an optimist, they will make some tasty lemonade. To the pessimist, life is dry, bitter, and plain; to the optimist, life is sweet. And they have the very same ingredients.
The actions of optimists and pessimists are also very different. Optimists are hopeful about the future and they expect positive things to happen. And when you expect positive things to happen, you often enable them to happen. If you expect to meet with success, you will try. If you expect to meet failure, you will not. Let’s say that you want to ask a girl to dance but you’re not sure if she’ll say yes. If you’re optimistic and you think she’ll say yes, then of course you’re going to ask her to dance. If you’re pessimistic and you think she’ll say no, then you might not ask her to dance because you might be embarrassed if she says no. You don’t have to feel embarrassed if she says no. She might say no. She might say yes. It’s better not to stand and guess. The inventor Thomas Edison had this to say about trying and success and failure: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” When things don’t work out, pessimists say, “I told you so.” Optimists say, “It was worth a try.” You owe it to yourself to try.
Now you might be thinking, “This sounds good but aren’t there some things that are so bad that it is impossible to see them in a positive light?” I don’t think there are. I saw a documentary about two Jewish prisoners in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. The man recounting the story said he found the other man by the fence, praising God. Shocked, he said, “We are in the most terrible situation imaginable. What can you possibly be thanking God for?” The other man replied, “I am thanking God that He did not make me like the murderers around us.” Wow. There’s an optimist. That’s someone who can see the good in things. Seeing the good in things doesn’t make the whole situation good—I’m sure that man wished he never saw the inside of a concentration camp—but even in his dire situation, he was able to find something good and to focus on it. Do that.
There is a Chinese fable about judging things to be good or bad, which goes like this:
There was a farmer who had only one horse, and one day the horse ran away. The neighbors came over to grieve with him over his terrible loss. The farmer said, “Good or bad, who can say?”
A month later, the horse came home—this time bringing two beautiful wild horses with her. The neighbors became excited at the farmer’s good fortune. Such lovely strong horses! The farmer said, “Good or bad, who can say?”
Then one day, farmer’s son was thrown off of one of the wild horses and he broke his leg. All the neighbors were very distressed. Such bad luck! The farmer said, “Good or bad, who can say?”
Then a war came, and every able-bodied man was drafted and sent into battle. Only the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg, remained. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. The farmer said, “Good or bad, who can say?”
The neighbors in this fable judge certain events to be good and others to be bad. The farmer seems to judge none of the events. Let’s make an exercise out of this fable and judge all of the events to be good and all of them to be bad. If Shakespeare is right and “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” then we should be able to do this.
Okay, here are the events:
- Farmer’s horse runs away.
- Horse returns with two other horses.
- Son breaks leg.
- Son is not able to fight in the war.
Here are the events seen as bad:
- Farmer’s horse runs away.
- Bad because the farm will be less productive.
- Horse returns with two other horses.
- Bad because we don’t know where those horses have been and they might infect the original horse with some strange horse disease.
- Son breaks leg.
- Bad because the farmer needs the son’s help to run the farm.
- Son is not able to fight in the war.
- Bad because now he might have a harder time finding a wife because he’ll be competing with war heroes who return from the war once the war is over.
Here are the events seen as good:
- Farmer’s horse runs away.
- Good because it makes us grateful for everything we still have and makes us more creative in solving our problems; we now have to find other ways to do the work that the horse was doing, with fewer resources.
- Horse returns with two other horses.
- Good because with three horses, the farm will be three times more productive.
- Son breaks leg.
- Good because at least he didn’t break his head and now he will learn to be more careful. Better to have a smallish accident now than a catastrophic one later.
- Son is not able to fight in the war.
- Good because people die in wars. He will be much safer on the farm.
It looks like Shakespeare’s right. Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Okay, so if you have the chance to make everything good or everything bad, which will you choose?
Optimism is a choice. Optimism is an opportunity to judge things positively, and to find and focus on the good part of any situation. Take that opportunity. Be optimistic. Be relentlessly optimistic. Be undeterred in your optimism. Be like the man who the poet E. E. Cummings describes, the painter who said to those near him, when his fingers would not hold a brush: “Tie it to my hand.”
