I have been reading that optimistis live longer than pessimists and I have also been reading that people who try to be upbeat about everything are endangering their mental health.
Who to believe?
I think that many people are a fine mixture. I am an optimist by nature but I am also a realist. If I miss the last bus home, I know that there will be no magic chariot descending from the clouds and I will have to get a taxi or walk. I know that if I wander about late at night in a district of the city known for its high crime rate, I am asking for trouble and there will be no knight in shining armour to help me.
I think that is known as common sense, except it is not so common these days.
However, I find people who run everything down, always expect the worst but never seem prepared for it, get on my nerves. Yes, we all know what it is to be depressed, to have things get you down, usually things you can't control. It is impossible to put a smile on your face all the time. But in general terms, things work themselves out. I think it was Robert Louis Stevenson (author of Treasure Island) who wrote that "looking on the best side of things is worth forty pounds a year" or something like that. And it is true.
In the fourteen or fifteen years leading up to my retirement, the company I worked for was taken over at least five times. Each time the new owners told us that nothing would change and then within a few months proceeded to change everything. Colleagues lost their jobs all around me. Not being the desirable age for the working world - i.e. past 50 - I half expected to be made redundant. And there's a point in hand, some wonderful person said "of course you are not redundant, your job is." Yuk! That is a form of turning the truth into a nice little skulking cliche which I cannot agree with (any more than objections to ending a sentence with a preposition, lol).
The thing is, although I badly needed to continue working, because I have this optimistic gene or lack of brain or whatever it is, I somehow believed that I would be OK. Something would turn up. And that is what did happen. Yes, my faith and prayers helped me a lot but I don't think I would have prayed if I didn't believe I would get help of some sort.
During one takeover I did not have a designated position for around four months, I was merely kept on because of my long years at the company and because I always got good reviews from my superiors. If they couldn't find a position for me within 6 months, I would be let go, they told me. It wasn't easy coming into the office every day without a particular reason - yes, of course I helped out where I could, but I had no boss and didn't belong to any department. In Jane Austen's Emma, Mr. Weston a lovable characters, says "I have observed in the course of my life that if things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next."
I think that is true of the majority of us. And yes, I am aware that if you are stuck in a refugee camp or in a war zone, for example, the chances of things improving are very slim indeed.
What I am trying to say here is that being optimistic is a gift that we are possibly born with. I am profoundly grateful that I possess it.
