Sunday, January 24, 2010

On Pessimism

This is not really a lesson. It's a bit more of a reflection but I'm hoping it's taught me something and I just haven't noticed.

On Pessimism
We are dramatic
We jump to conclusions
We are raised on what if's and worst case scenarios
We all go through that phase where we only listen to music about death and pain and other lame stuff like that.
Maybe that's all just me but something I know for sure:
We are all pessimistic.
I especially have been pessimistic this past few weeks.
Pessimism is scary. It is not kind it does not spare people's feelings or dreams.
Pessimism takes everything that is light and everything that is in between and drags it down to it's own level.
As humans we want to be special. We all feel isolated. We all sometimes feel like we are the last sane person.
The last smart person.
The last person who has any real thoughts or morals or dreams that are actually pure.
We sometimes wonder if maybe we aren't human maybe something weird happened and we are an island.
Separate from anything else in the whole world.
It's comforting because it allows us to be truly separated from everything sad and commercial and scary.
Maybe thats just me.
I do know that pessimism makes life harder. We become islands unto ourself and as cheesy as the saying is no man is an island.
Of course though we are pessimistic about pessimism.
We convince ourself that the hopeless outlooks of everyone else (not ourself though we never put ourselves into that group of everyone else) we be the downfall of humanity.
But then it's time for a reality check because until the end of time the artists will keep painting and the writers will see those paintings and be inspired writing great poetry,novels and plays and so then the actors will preform those plays and the singers will sing songs about great art and the scientists will play that soundtrack as they work in their labs and all the mathematicians will change their desktop backgrounds.
And we'll keep moving forward.
Someone will look at all the pessimism in the world and all the songs about death and eyeliner and they will change it.
They will be few but nobody goes through their whole life being pessimistic cause those people usually kill themselves.
We will write facebook notes we will smile at strangers we will let someone have our seat on the bus.We will stand up for what is right and we will not be stupidly optimistic we will be confident in our own kind because strangely we must (in a way) join the mob if we want to make stands as an individual.
We will grow
We will change
We will continue.

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