Skip to main content

Being a pessimist

Everybody wants to be an optimist. Some are eternal optimists. In the race to remain positive in the face of adversity, and get praised for their positivity, most people refuse to face reality. Until now, I too was an optimist. But now I question myself. Do we really need to be optimists always?
Why can't we digest being called a 'pessimist'? What is wrong with an occasional pessimism? Let go and see the burden you are carrying, fly away. You will feel light. You will be free of carrying the burden of expecting others' goodness, and yours too. You will learn to accept that people can have bad qualities. That no one is perfect or remain perfect always.
Pessimism also lets you see reality as it is, without the film of goodness covering it. Then you can handle the situation better and live better.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The next step forward

“ What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” -- Jack Kerouac (American Poet and Novelist) From what I have seen and admired in humans, they are eternal optimists. Goodbyes seem to break us, but we straighten up and walk, holding our head high, blinking away our tears. And as regards the specks of people dispersing, when something moves away, something else comes near. Guess that's how laws of nature move. If a time comes when nothing else comes near, it's when we will become really alone; alone to live and love life without any reason, taking the next step forward.

Caterpillar or butterfly?

'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares? 

Life?

What is life? I was thinking about it on my way home. Then it flashed. Walking on a lonely road, with your head raised, looking at the sky and getting lost in the sky is life. Taking a deep breath of cool air is life. Drinking a glass full of water when you are too thirsty is life. Eating delicious food when you are dead hungry is life. Nothing else matters. May be emotions are not life. They just mar the beauty of all these things that are life. They take us away from life. Takes away our capacity to enjoy life. Don't you agree?