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Preponing Optimism



The world we live in is not the most fertile of grounds for optimism. If the day to day problems were not bad enough, the media has done an excellent job at painting a picture of dystopia and then promoting the very practises of materialism and self-consciousness that has propelled our journey to it. Along the way, certain acts of unexpected generosity (and some 9gag videos) restores our faith in humanity, albeit temporarily, for for every good man, there are 9 idiots, and for every neurone joint we allocate in our brain for remembering the good stuff, we allocate 9 for the bad stuff.  

And in the middle of all this, we go by our daily lives, where problems pile up one after the other and the end is as hard to see as someone looking contented on the MRT. We scroll through the list of holiday destinations we can go next to escape from the stale, unchanging present and we loathe every moment when we make our way back home from a refreshing holiday. Next thing to look forward to this year would be the bonus and hopefully the economy picks up, which seems unlikely because the manufacturing output has dipped by x% and blah blah. Maybe it would be cheaper to get married now, only if at least one of the hundred random strangers we 'liked' to on Tinder replied (and did not come across as a wierdo).

The point is, this world is a breeding ground for the twin evils of pessimism and cynicism, and rightfully so. However, as I have found out lately, such an attitude is always a hindrance to our enjoyment of the present, mainly because it tends to exaggerate the problems we are deluded with. The problems exist, no doubt, but to see it objectively as it is, requires a far more difficult choice to be made on how we want to lead our lives. By choosing to be optimistic, the problems are almost always easier to solve for we are in a better state of mind to solve it. We should choose to be optimistic, not because it makes us happy, but because it will ultimately benefit us. And this choice should not be delayed until we face the problem, but way before we face it.

The idea is there. The implementation, as I am discovering, is always the hard part. 

(So much for being optimistic)

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