It takes time to form an awareness of the world. The world we live in is inevitably harsh and to our conscience that grave acceptance is not assured to us when we are child. Through the childhood we grow up with a sense of youthful optimism of our surroundings, life basically appears to be a whirl of cotton candy full of happiness and glee. Comprised of easy friendships, love at first sight and rightful intentions of all the people we see. We ought to think that the world for the most part is completely made for us; a world that has sold us fiction. Gradually as we grow in our age we realize it’s the complete opposite of what we thought of it was in the first place; the world reveals itself to be far more complicated and convoluted. We see life as a casket of all chaos and miseries. Now it seems the world we once pondered upon from the popular culture and TV shows is taking a bleaker route. It is more saddening then before, nothing goes on to our expectations anymore. We find ourselves lost in the tribe, we go through traumas, the moments we lose our closed ones earlier then we should, the moments our loved ones no longer feels the same for us and the moments we fail at the things we worked so hard for. Nothings goes right and we tend to loosen our tenacity to align through this path of life because of obvious disappointments. Slowly and slowly our youthful and credulous optimism is held into submission and is replaced with some degree of pessimism. Honestly, any examined life goes through this transition. At first this could sound rather sombre and disappointing but with rightful consideration we can understand that it is necessary.
Optimism is great, it ensues us with a positive attitude towards life and no doubt it will help us to deal with the proportionate amount
of adversities. But being relentlessly optimistic can leave us crushed when reality inevitably disappoints us. Optimism needs a value check that creates a healthy tension to balance things out. This is the turning point where we learn that an ample amount of pessimism is necessary in our life. Perhaps we learn that it should be acquired as a recipe of life and our existence.
A healthy dose of pessimism is essential in our ability to adequately deal with this life. It on the other hand helps us to alleviate expectation and serves as an aid against life’s constant attempt to thrust our spirits out of us. In a practical sense, pessimism counter balances our absurd optimistic expectations of the culture we live in and help us adapt out of the deeply attached, unrealistic perceptions that we formed as a child. An unharmed pessimism constantly reminds us that things will not always be the way we want or always be kind, but rather they will go wrong, even unimaginably wrong but despite that we can still be okay. We must recognize that through a certain quality of pessimism we can extract a more reasonable optimism of life. We live through a grim truth; we are all improvising our way through of existence, constantly confused and unclear. No matter how big or small we all make mistakes; we don’t know how or why and that makes none of us perfect or normal in the traditional sense or so. This is a world where happiness is often hard; there is greed, tragic and malevolence around us and we will continue to have no matter what we do.
If we be more radical, at any moment, this whole world and all of humanity could end for a number of reasons that we can say an apocalypse or where an asteroid hits earth that could eradicate the whole human race. Perhaps, for now it’s still an Armageddon dream but everything just said prior to it, the thought of it all coming it an end makes us feel sad and fearful. We don’t want it to end. Of all uncertainties, chaos and hardships of life we want to move on. We want to endure and constantly test our potentials to our maximum limits. In this way we find the hopeful spirit and strength of humankind. In true words, we learn to find optimism through pessimism. If we peruse through the contexts of all philosophers and religious texts, we see the all school of thoughts make us aware of the pains that comes through an examined life. There is courage in facing the realities of pessimism and strength to be formed in it. We must be pessimistic about life’s condition in order to face their realities and we should also be optimistic about our abilities to face that realities and harness strength, hope and experience from it.
Pessimism is real. It is natural and helpful but it is not all. Like evil is to goodness, pebbles is to a magnificent flower , darkness is to light and silence is to song. In the same way we can say pessimism is to optimism. We can’t find any real optimism without first admitting the real pessimisms of life. In the dirt of life, it is up us to plant the seeds watch the flowers grow and enjoy the beauty in the spite of the fact that in few months, we know they will die.
“But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own. Not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.” _ Marcus Aurelius.
