Last week, on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, I spoke of choosing hope in the spirit of what I think he brings to our troubled world.
Today I’d like to go further with that idea. I’d like to talk about choosing optimism as a philosophy, an attitude, a way of life.
Before I do, however, I want to fully acknowledge the difficulty and complexity in this choice. Many tragedies, such as 9/11, wars, and natural disasters, not to mention personal losses and challenges we all experience at one time or another can alter our perception and understanding of any good existing in our lives. Pain and suffering can block our awareness of good all together.
Optimism, I think, goes deeper than just being hopeful, in that it is a belief, an attitude of confidence that there is good among all the bad, and beyond that, a desire to find it. When someone is depressed or grieving or worried about paying next month’s rent it’s really hard, if not impossible, to be hopeful about much of anything. To be optimistic isn’t just turning a switch or denying reality. It is the hard work of accepting that reality, feeling the pain and being willing to work through it with the expectation that there is something good at the end of it, maybe even in the middle of it.
So given all of the above is true, how can I presume that optimism is a choice, when it so seemingly out of reach for so many? The truth is, I can’t presume that at all. I can only offer it. I can only suggest that the sun is still shining in the middle of a bad thunderstorm, when we can’t see it, and that it will be visible to us again.
