Skip to main content

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)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another Day at the Office

"I am sorry, but are you good at IT?", she inquired with the most apologetic of expression. I gave her an incredulous look. Seriously? This was the second time I was being asked that question in one month and I took offense. It was almost as if the world judged that the only reason my race would be allowed to venture overseas was to fix other people's computers. "No. I am a production engineer", I replied, half wondering if I should clarify it had nothing to do with human production, which my people are also well known for. "Oh. That is a pity. Our printer broke down and we were wondering how to fix it", she said pointing to a piece of contraption that lay on the table nearby. Men being men, I offered to help. On walking over and looking into the inside of the contraption, I saw what most millennials see if they were to ever see the inside of the multiple devices they are perpetually holding onto; abyss. I doubted she would give me a discount f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Life in the Time of Corona

I can't remember the last time I felt I had this much time. Not that I was never the beneficiary of a balanced life within socialist Europe, but I had squandered much of it away, jumping from the consumption of ever immersive electronic devices, forgetful routines and the maintenance of social relationships. A digital detox felt timely. Faced with a swath of unfilled time, here I was blogging again after ages (does creative pursuits such as writing does not fall within digital detox?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Time had flown. 2020 is a year that will live in all our memories till the end of our lives, not so much because of what happened, but because of what did not happen. A year that started promisingly with two memorable marriages of family and friend came to a halt as a tiny microorganism proved how vulnerable we humans still were. I remember when colleagues in the office laughed as a Chinese friend hoarded masks so she could send them back home. A month later they were asking her where the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Undertones

"Don'e be like a girl. Come on. Jump!". "You are not a girl. Now put your head into the water". "See those girls. Even they are not afraid of swimming in the big pool". A person's true nature is often very evident in times of frustration. In my failing attempts to make my eight year old cousin swim, I resorted to shaming and comparison, What he needed was courage. Therefore who he had to be compared with was a group that was not associated with it. The sentences came to me almost naturally, Without thought. And then I caught myself swimming in that stereotype. It surprised me for it opposed the strong belief my rational self held on the idea of equality. Following the surprise came the shame, the shame in the knowledge that despite my open claim that women were by no means to be taken to be mentally or emotionally weaker to men, I subconsciously did harbour thoughts that they were in fact, weaker. Plus, it was made worse by the realisat...
Post a Comment
Read more