Amputate your limb and still remain happy because you’d be saving half of your expenses on lavish foot wears.
If optimism and pessimism are the counter-parts of a coin, I exist where the coin never sleeps flat. I might sound as normal as you are – like most of us are but all that differentiates us is how you and how I minutely overlook the worldly occurrings, how intricate and diverse our chains of thoughts are. Like the tortuous engineering of the proteins in our DNA molecules – overtly identical, yet dissimilar covertly, our diversified thoughts are our identities.
And to me, optimism is never appealing. It never finds a way into me because it gives me a connotation of expecting something. Its philosophy tells us to look for good, expect for good always and I prefer not to be obsessed with the ‘good’ things. After all, life is not a bed of roses – the more I hunt desperately, in a bestial way, for the roses in the bush, the more vulnerable I am to be stung by thorns. Well, perhaps everyone knows that and still likes to expect good things but wouldn’t it hurt more if results are contrary to your thoughts and anticipations?
Perhaps not, if one remains an optimist all the same. But for how long is the question. I doubt if one can remain perpetually sanguine about life because limits are nowhere infinities, unreachable. When disappointments follow and pile up incessantly, when you fail the test of optimism in the ultimate crucible, you might just end up cursing yourself and Him. Then, the throes of life would leave you weaker, making fortitude peter out, making the whole of you rend at that dead end.
Hence, I prefer to be on the safer side – but it’s not pessimism. Still I hope for good, but not expect. Just work and wait is the principle, nothing more.
All life long, the realization that has solely born out of me is to never expect anything, never to prophesy outcomes. Just stay quiet. Don’t fantasize them because they are lethal to emotional strength and well-being. Miracles don’t happen often. And don’t even generalize them because life is not a game of chess where only a set number of moves can follow the preceding one. In real life, outcomes are infinite. Because here, every piece has diverse and multitudinous characteristics – unlike pawns and bishops to the king; moreover these characteristics are conditional and liable to change – dynamic to circumstances. So, I believe correct outcomes are what we cannot get to reach in prophesying with our minds, plagued with the willingness to succeed, obsessed with optimism. So, I’ve given up anticipating things, predicting results.
Now, surprises don’t surprise but shocks don’t shock me either. Because I know something very unpredictable is always about to happen in my life. One I might not have expected. One I might not even to be able to imagine. One like death. And I am always ready for them, emotionally equipped.
To recapitulate, hopes are inspiring to me, dreams are ample. But expectations, I fear, are devastating. They aren’t always as friendly as they seem. You might disagree but ‘whether to expect or not’ is entirely your choice of life. I leave that to you. Just resort your life to the most. Don’t get into the tangles of why and how. Just listen to your heart and act. Believe in what you do and when you’re expecting, just be aware of the possibility of the unexpected outcomes. Because before all your actions and the outcomes, the question – what to expect and what not – is what makes all the difference.
