I once heard a distinction between having an “opinion” and being “opinionated.” Having an opinion is based on one’s own experience, which can change with additional experiences. Being opinionated is acquiring someone else’s attitude, belief, or preconceived notion and is less malleable and more rigidly expressed. My thoughts on “optimists” are my own based on people I have known. These relationships have led me to understand two kinds of optimism expressed in people. The Cambridge Dictionary defines optimism as “the quality of being full of hope and emphasizing the good parts of a situation, or a belief that something good will happen.” How optimists maintain their “hope” and “belief” is what divides these positive people into two groups.
Some folks are capable of a positive attitude by limiting their input of situational information. By avoiding discomfort caused by contrary or difficult information, their limited worldview supports their positive outlook. Willful ignorance can be the underpinning of their hope and belief in a siloed isolation from anything contrary or challenging to their worldview. This filtering of data and information can be cultural and/or personally intentional. “Burying your head in the sand” is based on the myth that ostriches stick their heads in the sand when frightened. The idiom is used when a person or organization refuses to confront difficult situations. This refusal, which can be projected as optimism, leads to inaction in confronting changing circumstances. Conducting “business as usual” is a comfort zone that projects confidence. A fixed mindset can be useful in promoting this kind of confidence by assuming that if “I don’t see it, it can’t see me.” Thomas Gray published a poem in 1742 that reads in part, “where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” So is it ignorant optimism or optimistically ignorant? I have known individuals who claim their “glass is half full” even as the remaining contents are draining out.
Other individuals and organizations I have known recognize the hole in the glass and plug it to prevent total emptying. This kind of optimism is based on a willingness to confront difficult circumstances with an open mind and flexibility. Courage, action, and problem solving are the hallmarks of this type of optimism. An actively engaged, positive worldview is supported by several developmental attributes. A life-long learner is foundational. Curiosity itself is optimistic in that fear doesn’t prevent discovery. Living with an open mindset can develop multiple skills and perspectives as tools for problem solving. Positive use of critical thinking is necessary.
The concept of comfort is another division within the optimists’ community. Staying in your lane is more comfortable than exploring new routes. Some folks avoid discomfort at all costs, making a limited experience of being alive. I am reminded of a story in Teresa Jordan’s book, Riding the White Horse Home. She writes that a colt must be trained to get over fear of the bone piles of dead livestock commonly found on western range lands. If the colt shies away from these piles, it will be useless as a working adult horse. Discomfort caused by fear would limit where the horse would travel. Some adult humans proclaiming optimism are privately afraid of “bone piles” caused by changing circumstances. They just won’t go there.
Other individuals are not shy of physical discomfort in their pursuit of competitive sports and exercise to maintain good health. Our chiropractor tells us “motion is lotion,” and as we age that motion is more and more uncomfortable. But to not move is to not move. Life is motion. Psychological and mental discomfort is experienced by those who confront troubled social, environmental, and political issues of the day. Their optimistic belief in a better outcome propels them past the negative into positivity. Life is change, so make it a change for the better, which is the basis of genuine optimism.
Reassuring habits can help us maintain an upbeat attitude due to predictable outcomes. We all have our routines. Efficiency and comfort are housed in our habitual daily lives. Habits are patterns we learn early in life that help us move through the formation of our adulthood. This universally important part of human development often stops at some point in adulthood when successful patterns of living and thought become fixed. Change, like motion, becomes harder as we age. Some habits become entrapping if so deeply held as to be unacknowledged and unchangeable. At this point, habits create a resistance to the changing world around us.
Our world is changing faster than it ever has. Stone was the basic tool material of humans for millennia. Modern plastics have been around for less than two hundred years. The hand-thrown projectiles used for millions of years have been replaced in the last hundred years by long-range missiles and rockets to the moon. Climate used to change at the grindingly slow pace of glaciers. Now our climate is changing with each new decade, upending our sense of typical, normal weather patterns supporting our agricultural needs. Increasingly, global floods, drought, and fire are changing how and where people live and die.
It is hard to remain optimistic if your eyes and ears are wide open. However, staying alert to our rapidly changing circumstances is the only road to genuine optimism full of hope and the promise of a good future for our children. We can’t turn a blind eye to what is happening locally and globally. We must be willing to change our habitual and wasteful use of natural resources. Manufacturers and consumers need to change the “throwaway” culture that currently fuels world economies. Genuine sustainability is an untapped profit center yet to be realized on a global level. Maximizing renewable energy and minimizing burning fossil fuels will help our children be optimistic about their futures. Our habitual animosities towards the “other” religion, color, or creed must be rectified if we are to live on this earth with any sense of positivity. We have to approach these modern and ancient “bone piles” with solutions born of optimistic belief that we can change what is destructive and find solutions to address our collective problems. Hope is a must.
Many of our national and international leaders are clinging to past methods of settling disputes and making profits. These are deeply ingrained privileges of power controlled by an exceedingly small part of the human population on planet Earth. These privileges are often used for self-interest at the expense of humanity in general and/ or specific populations. The rest of us must find ways to put optimism, hope, and belief in the goodness of humanity back into our collective consciousness. I am hopeful if young people, born into a changed world and looking with open eyes to a shared future, are put in positions of power and policy-making. A brighter future is possible by replacing the old guard leadership trying to maintain power and privilege arising from an era now gone forever.
