Optimism in a Pessimistic World

The question of fate versus free will plagues me like nothing else. In Garcia Marquez’s autobiography he gets the advice “Be smart now, your life is in your hands”.

To what extent is our life really in our hands? Everyday I hear from different people various things that make me believe humans need to believe they are in control. Punishing themselves and other for things that go wrong and congratulating themselves for things that go according to plan. But it’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason that some things work out while others don’t.

At different ages humans have different desires. From parental attention to romantic love to wealth and power to someone to be a continuation of you. At my age I hear most about romantic love and its cruel nature. People often ask why it didn’t work in their case and then proceed to give justifications and reasons and perhaps returning to the relationship to give it one more try to perhaps better be able to explain to themselves and others the reasons of the failure. There isn’t always a reason. Infact there mostly isn’t.

Over the years I have started to believe that this is predetermined. The person you marry and how much money you have in your life are factors we can’t change. If you look at it with that point of view you soon see the dead ends as turns that the story of your life takes. Every turn in the road is bringing you closer to your destiny.

At every stage people think happiness is just almost within their grasp. That promotion, that vacation, that expensive car, that other person. If only that could belong to them the puzzle of their life would be complete. The space inside would be filled. The unfortunate ones get what they want. And realize the space is still there. We actually live our lives as if it were a dress rehearsal, as if our life hasn’t yet started. When we’re in school we think life starts when we’re older, out of school. In college we wait for the ‘real world’ before we decide to get serious. In love we wait for marriage. In marriage we wait for children. With children we wait for them to grow up, and when they’re grown up we wait for them to start their lives. And then its over before really having begun.

Why do we have trouble accepting the present as our life? Is it too grey, when we think our life will be in Technicolor? The way we live perhaps it’s wise to pray for sudden death, to be spared of those last few minutes when you might realize I’ve spent my life waiting for it to start. I’ve lived in the past and the future, everywhere but here and now.

There are very few of us who are happy with their lives at present. Who, if you ask what moment of their life they would choose if it were to be lived and re-lived in continuous repetition, would say "Now, this moment is perfect". Most of are looking just ahead. We are driving down a road where we see the signs approaching and as they get bigger they speed up until we’ve passed them and already have our sights set on the next one. But if my today is unhappy and if I die tomorrow, will I never have experienced the perfect life that awaits me just around the corner?

Hope also escaped Pandora’s Box along with the sorrows and miseries of this world. And that’s what makes us believe that life should be great. But it isn’t. Life at present, waking up in our crumpled beds, not looking or smelling as fresh as Hollywood would like us to believe most people are when they wake up, alarm blaring music that somehow sounded better when we set it as the tone but now just makes us ill, getting dressed half asleep in the room that is always just slightly cluttered which we promise we will clean when we have time, the drive to work during which we never think about the things we tell ourselves we’ll think about while driving to work but rather end up thinking about inane things, entering the office smiling at people when we’d really rather not smile at, spending the day making spreadsheets that will change nobody’s life, feeling sick about laughing at the boss’s jokes which are really not that funny and waiting to get off while dreaming about someday doing what we love, meeting friends who don’t look nearly as good or aren’t remotely as interesting as they are on TV, having dinner at home with family and realizing more everyday that they just don’t get you. How can we accept that as our life?

We all harbor fantasies of when we’ll quit this job and do something that we love and will be really good at, of when we’ll marry who we love, of when we will be better. And somehow having those things will make us better looking, smarter, wittier, and more popular. The people we tell ourselves are our friends will be mad with envy and that’s when we’ll really be living the life we deserve. Because our intentions are good, right? And then a point comes when we realize it’s not going to happen. We all have our moments of happiness, like infomercials that give us visions of the miracle product that promises to solve all our worries and we call in with our credit cards just to receive it and put it at the back of the shelf collecting dust when we realize it’s just not as good as we though it would be. Life is just not as good as we thought it would be.

I am wary of anything that seems too perfect because there have to be as many imperfections concealed within it to reach the equilibrium of black and white that is a property of everything within this world. But I refuse to accept your verdict that I am a pessimist. If the decision to stop chasing an illusion is pessimism then that definition needs revision. If you are not happy here and now, then you don’t know the formula, and no matter what you get in this world you will never be happy. Happiness is in the ingredients lying on your shelf now, and mixing them to create something wonderful, or even just enjoying their disarray. There is no secret ingredient the possession of which will make you a great chef, and spending your time looking for it is just delaying your chance to experience happiness in the disorder and lack of symmetry of life.

You already carry around your source of happiness inside you, and you don’t need to look for it in things or events or people. And if that’s not optimism what is.