optimism essay conclusion

Essay on Optimism

Students are often asked to write an essay on Optimism in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Optimism

Understanding optimism.

Optimism is a hopeful outlook towards life. It is choosing to see the bright side of things and expecting the best possible outcome.

The Power of Optimism

Optimism can boost our mood and motivation. It helps us to persevere and overcome challenges. Optimistic people are happier, healthier, and more successful.

Practicing Optimism

We can practice optimism by focusing on positive thoughts, expressing gratitude, and staying hopeful. Remember, even in tough times, there’s always something good to look forward to.

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250 Words Essay on Optimism

The concept of optimism, a mental attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of specific endeavors will be positive, is not just a mindset but a powerful tool that shapes our perception of the world. It is a beacon of light in the face of adversity, a guiding principle that encourages resilience and perseverance.

Optimism and Psychological Well-being

Optimism plays a pivotal role in psychological well-being. It is closely linked to mental health, as it can reduce the risk of depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders. Optimists tend to see challenges as temporary hurdles, not as insurmountable obstacles. This positive outlook enables them to maintain a healthier psychological state, even in the face of adversity.

Optimism and Physical Health

Not only does optimism impact mental health, but it also has profound effects on physical well-being. Studies show that optimists generally have better cardiovascular health and stronger immune systems. They are less likely to succumb to chronic diseases and have a higher life expectancy. Their positive outlook motivates them to maintain a healthier lifestyle, thus contributing to improved physical health.

Optimism: A Catalyst for Success

In the realm of success, optimism acts as a catalyst. It encourages risk-taking, fosters resilience, and promotes a growth mindset. Optimists view failures as learning opportunities, not as a reflection of their abilities. This outlook cultivates an environment of innovation and progress, leading to greater personal and professional success.

In conclusion, optimism is not just a positive attitude but a life-enhancing tool. It is a testament to the power of the human mind and its ability to shape our reality. By embracing optimism, we can improve our mental and physical health, foster resilience, and pave the way for success.

500 Words Essay on Optimism

Introduction.

Optimism, a term derived from the Latin word “optimum,” is a psychological attribute that reflects an individual’s positive perspective towards life. It is the tendency to perceive the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. This essay explores the concept of optimism, its implications, benefits, and the role it plays in shaping our lives.

The Concept of Optimism

The power of positive thinking.

Positive thinking, a cornerstone of optimism, is not about ignoring life’s less pleasant situations. Instead, it involves approaching these circumstances with a positive and productive mindset. Optimists believe they can navigate through difficulties and find solutions. This perspective can significantly impact our physical and mental health, relationships, and overall quality of life.

Implications of Optimism

Optimism has profound implications for various aspects of life. It is associated with better health outcomes, increased longevity, higher levels of happiness, and improved coping skills. Optimists tend to have stronger immune systems, lower levels of stress and depression, and higher overall well-being. Furthermore, optimism can enhance academic and professional performance by fostering persistence, engagement, and a proactive attitude.

Optimism and Resilience

Optimism: a skill to be cultivated.

While some people may naturally have a more optimistic outlook, optimism can also be nurtured and developed. Cognitive-behavioral techniques, mindfulness practices, and gratitude exercises can help cultivate optimism. The key is to challenge negative thought patterns and replace them with more positive, constructive ones.

In conclusion, optimism is a powerful psychological attribute that can significantly influence our life experiences. It is not merely a passive expectation of positive outcomes but an active engagement in life, fostering resilience, enhancing well-being, and promoting success. As we navigate through the complexities of life, cultivating an optimistic outlook can serve as a guiding light, illuminating the path to personal growth and fulfillment.

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75 Optimism Examples

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Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Optimism, derived from the Latin term ‘optimus’ meaning “best”, is the philosophy or tendency to expect the best possible outcome (Peterson, 2010).

Rooted in positive psychology , it is a mental orientation or mindset that influences how an individual perceives and interprets situations.

Researchers assert that it’s more than just having a smile on one’s face or seeing the glass as half full; it is an outlook on life characterized by positive and hopeful attitudes (Carver, Scheier & Segerstrom, 2010).

A person embodying optimism generally anticipates good results regardless of the circumstances (for instance, an optimistic student expects the best outcome even when faced with challenging exams). They exhibit resilience in the face of adversity, manifesting as a tendency to persist and work harder with a faith in positive results (Scheier & Carver, 2018).

Optimism Examples

• Expecting good outcomes: This refers to an individual’s inclination to anticipate promising results, governed by a confident and proactive mindset . Such a mentality underscores optimism by proposing a continuous belief in positivity, despite potential obstacles.
• Trusting people’s intentions: This means exercising solid faith in the sincerity of people’s actions and objectives. It embodies optimism by presuming that people generally aim to act harmoniously and honestly, fostering a feeling of connection and mutual respect.
• Believing in oneself: This involves possessing strong confidence in one’s skills and capabilities. Rooted in optimism, it bolsters the assertion of one’s worth, driving the active pursuit to excel and revolutionize one’s life trajectory. 
• Embracing change positively: This implies welcoming unfamiliar circumstances with an open heart and eagerness, expressing flexibility. Demonstrating optimism, it’s the canvas where life implements its colour, bringing along new opportunities to grow and blossom.
• Focusing on solutions: This encapsulates identifying and giving priority to answers or strategies rather than problems. An underlying pillar of optimism, it shifts the focus from passive lamenting to actionable steps towards resolution.
• Finding opportunity in adversity: This represents a virtue consistent with optimism, where disruptive situations are approached as beneficial circumstances offering valuable life lessons. It sustains a hopeful mindset, shaping arduous moments into nurseries of growth and strength. 
• Visualizing success: This illustrates prediction and affirming of thriving outcomes even before they manifest, serving as a motivational tool. Such a mentality anchors one in optimism, fuelling courage to take on ambitious ventures. 
• Perceiving the glass as half-full: The notion of viewing situations from a ‘glass half-full’ perspective exemplifies an optimistic worldview. This viewpoint emphasizes gratitude by appreciating available resources, thereby boosting morale and encouraging positivity outward actions.
• Encouraging others’ dreams: This comprises promoting and celebrating others’ goals, epitomizing an outward display of optimism. Such compassion and aliveness can often bolster a faith in humanity and proliferate optimism to surrounding acquaintances.
• Pursuing continual self-improvement : This encompasses a tenacious journey towards personal impartation and intellectual refinement. As an embodiment of optimism, its engenders growth and expansive experiences, leading to heightened self-awareness and satisfaction.
• Celebrating small victories: This represents valuing and commemorating even the seemingly minor accomplishments. Cultivating an optimistic outlook, it increases enthusiasm and motivation by appreciating about the process as much as the end result. 
• Maintaining a cheerful disposition: This endows maintaining an ever-pleasant demeanor, expressing emotion tied to feelings of general contentment or joy. As a projection of optimism, it lightens one’s attitude and influences others positively.
• Cultivating gratitude: The act of fostering thankfulness towards life’s gifts whether big or small. Reverberating optimism, this practice reinforces positive observations of life experiences and bolsters overall wellbeing. 
• Welcoming new experiences: This implies the enthusiastic acceptance of novel events or challenges, promoting flexibility and adaptability. In demonstrating optimism, it highlights the thrill in expanding horizons and the power of continual learning.
• Valuing personal growth: This exhibits a continued focus on self-evolution, embracing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual progress. A sign of optimism, it summons inner resources to better confront challenges, recognizing the inevitability and potential within progression.
• Seeing beauty in simplicity: This portrays a premise central to optimism — appreciation and zest for simple, often overlooked aspects of life. Such a perspective echoes the thought that happiness can be discovered within simplicity, spreading sparks of positivity.
• Embodying resilience in failure: This encompasses the embodiment of robust resilience in the aftermath of disappointments, using them as platforms to spring forward from. Viewing setbacks as conduits to triumph links to optimism, fostering growth and perseverance. 
• Accepting uncertainty with poise: This means admitting and handling ambiguity and fluctuations gracefully. In the light of optimism, this underlines courageous acceptance of life’s unpredictability and promotes adaptability.
• Choosing happiness in hardship: This concerns electing to stay cheerful, sustaining high spirits and maintaining positivity amid trying times. It’s a shining beacon of optimism, advocating personal control over emotional states, notwithstanding external circumstances.
• Exuding confidence in abilities: This necessitates holding an unwavering faith in one’s knowledge, talents, and skills, undeterred by failures. Rooted deeply in optimism, it motivates continued commitment and releases latent potentials.
• Practicing patience and endurance: This includes providing substantial time for growth and processes without unseemly hurry, appreciating fluctuating stages of evolution. Organic to optimism, it allows for maturity and boosts reassurance in the attainment of eventual glory. 
• Cherishing every moment: That requires an understanding of life’s fleeting nature, encouraging absorption in living instants with undivided attention. As a direct trait of optimism, it intensifies holistic enjoyment and harvests bouts of joy in ordinary situations.
• Upholding faith in humanity: This rests upon maintaining a positive perspective on mankind, anticipating mutual kindness, compassion, and decency. As an exceptional pillar of optimism, it steadies the belief in collective progress and morale in a supportive world.
• Being excited about the future: This is characterized by exhibiting enthusiasm and displaying vibrant anticipation about time ahead. With roots in optimism, it sparks motivation towards continually aspiring and persevering.
• Fostering a hopeful attitude: Maintaining such an attitude signifies carrying an optimistic mindset that envisages positivity throughout future occurrences. It influences personal and social realms of life, encouraging consistent anticipation of more pleasing and mirthful tomorrows.

50 Optimism Quotes (and Sayings about Optimism)

• “Every cloud has a silver lining.”
• “Tomorrow is another day.”
• “This too shall pass.”
• “When one door closes, another opens.”
• “Opportunities often come from obstacles.”
• “After a storm comes a calm.”
• “There’s always light at the end of the tunnel.”
• “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
• “Always look on the bright side.”
• “The sun will come out tomorrow.”
• “Better days are on their way.”
• “Every sunset brings a new dawn.”
• “Count your blessings, not your problems.”
• “Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day.”
• “Challenges are just opportunities in disguise.”
• “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”
• “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
• “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
• “The only way is up.”
• “The best is yet to come.”
• “When it rains, look for rainbows.”
• “Hope is the beacon which points to prosperity.”
• “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
• “Always believe something wonderful is about to happen.”
• “Turn your face towards the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.”
• “The future is as bright as your faith.”
• “Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.”
• “Every moment is a fresh beginning.”
• “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
• “Believe in miracles.”
• “Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.”
• “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.”
• “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
• “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
• “Rise above the storm and you will find the sunshine.”
• “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
• “Positive anything is better than negative nothing.”
• “Do not wait for the storm to pass, learn to dance in the rain.”
• “Always end the day with a positive thought.”
• “Hope is a waking dream.”
• “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.”
• “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
• “There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
• “Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.”
• “Start each day with a positive thought.”
• “Wherever life plants you, bloom with grace.”
• “Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.”
• “Believe you deserve it and the universe will serve it.”
• “The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.”
• “Every morning we are born again. What we do today matters most.”

Optimism has been linked to several positive health benefits. Researchers have associated optimism with reduced anxiety levels, lessened chances of developing chronic diseases, lower mortality rates, and improved overall health (Rasmussen, Scheier & Greenhouse, 2009).

A study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health (Kim, Kubzansky, Boehm, Levkoff, & Kawachi, 2014) revealed that positive psychological wellbeing, largely driven by optimism, was associated with a reduced risk of heart disease (e.g., participants who regularly portrayed a positive outlook were found to have an 11% lower risk of heart disease).

Optimism also reflects significantly on one’s everyday behavior. Those with an optimistic viewpoint tend to lead a healthier lifestyle, demonstrating regular exercise, a balanced diet, and adequate sleep (Friedman & Ryff, 2010).

Consider professional athletes, who, despite rigorous and physically demanding routines, maintain their fitness regimen with an optimistic frame of mind, often resulting in better performance records and a higher resilience towards stress (Beauchamp, Bray & Eys, 2017).

Overall, optimism goes beyond a mere positive attitude ; it is a steadfast belief that facilitates resilience, healthier lifestyles, and efficient problem-solving skills while promoting overall well-being.

Beauchamp, M. R., Bray, S. R., & Eys, M. (2017). Group dynamics in exercise and sport psychology. Routledge.

Carver C, Scheier M, Segerstrom S (2010). Optimism. Clinical psychology review.

Friedman, E. M., & Ryff, C. D. (2010). Living well with medical comorbidities: A biopsychosocial perspective. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 67(5), 535-544.

Kim, E. S., Kubzansky, L. D., Boehm, J. K., Levkoff, S. E., & Kawachi, I. (2014). Psychosocial factors and risk of hypertension: The Harvard School of Public Health Alumni Health Study. JAMA internal medicine, 174 (11), 1756-1764.

Peterson, C. (2010). Looking forward through the lifespan: Developmental psychology. Pearson Education Australia.

Rasmussen, H. N., Scheier, M. F., & Greenhouse, J. B. (2009). Optimism and physical health: a meta-analytic review. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 37 (3), 239-256.

Scheier, M., & Carver, C. (2018). Dispositional optimism and physical health: A long look back, a quick look forward. American Psychologist, 73 (9), 1082–1094.

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Essay on Positive Thinking

Positive thinking refers to a belief or mental attitude which makes us think that good things will happen eventually and our efforts will pay off sooner or later. It is the opposite of negative thinking which makes our mind full of stress and fear. Thus, an essay on positive thinking will show us how it reinforces thoughts like optimism and hope and works wonders.

Benefits of Positive Thinking

Let it be clear that positive thinking does not mean you do not notice the bad things in life. It means you try to find a solution in a productive way instead of whining about it. There are many benefits of positive thinking.

The first one is better health. Negative thinking gives rise to anxiety, stress, frustration and more. However, positive thinking helps you avoid all this and focus on staying healthy and doing better in life.

Further, it is essential for us to fight depression which positive thinking helps with. Similarly, it will also help us to relieve stress. Positive thinking overwhelms stress and it will allow you to get rid of stress.

As a result, positive thinking helps you live longer. It is because you will be free from diseases that form due to stress, anxiety and more. Moreover, it is also the key to success. Meaning to say, success becomes easier when you don’t bash yourself up.

Similarly, it also gives us more confidence. It boosts our self-esteem and helps in becoming more confident and self-assured. Therefore, we must certainly adopt positive thinking to make the most of our lives.

How to Build a Positive Thinking

There are many ways through which we can build positive thinking. To begin with, we must inculcate the habit of reading motivational and inspiring stories of people who are successful.

All this will help in motivating and inspiring you and showing you the right path. Moreover, it is important to never let negative thoughts thrive in your mind and work towards putting end to this habit.

You can do so by replacing your negative thoughts with constructive and positive reviews. Start to pay attention to your ideas and don’t pay heed to negative thoughts. Further, it is helpful to use affirmations.

These positive statements will truly sink into your subconscious mind and guide you to take better action. It will also help in visualising your dreams and getting the right means to achieve them fast.

Finally, always stay guard and gatekeep your mind to make important changes in life. In other words, do not be afraid to take actions. Keep yourself busy and do different things to avoid becoming cynical and remaining positive.

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Conclusion of the Essay on Positive Thinking

To conclude, we must change our attitude and believe that we will succeed one day. Moreover, we also need to implement positive thinking techniques which will help us learn from our failures and stay focused. As positive thinking plays an essential role in our lives, we must make sure to adopt in our lives.

FAQ of Essay on Positive Thinking

Question 1: What is positive thinking?

Answer 1: Positive thinking is basically an optimistic attitude. In other words, it is the practice of focusing on the good in any given situation. This kind of thinking can have a big impact on your physical and mental health .

Question 2: Why is positive thinking important?

Answer 2: Positive thinking is important as it helps us with stress management and can even improve our health. Moreover, some studies show that personality traits like optimism can affect many areas of our health and well-being. Thus, positive thinking comes with optimism

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Essay Samples on Optimism

Resilient and resilience in relation to optimism and well being.

When I started to learn positive psychology I had absolutly no idea what to expect from it, so I just thought that it will be some hippie practise about how to be happy all the time. Then we had our first lesson. We learned about...

Optimism: Perception of Life is a Matter of Perspective

Our perception of life is a matter of perspective. From a young age we are taught to see the glass as half-empty or half-full. This perception is a simple example of optimistic or pessimistic behavior. Optimism is typically viewed as an individual’s ability to see...

• Human Behavior
• Positive Psychology

The Point Of View Of Luck: Matter Of Preparation Meeting Opportunity

You probably also know this from yourselves: days when everything doesn't go as it should, days when everything goes wrong. Sometimes you wonder if you could help your luck a little. The phenomenon of luck not only fascinates us, it is also a constant companion...

Philosophy and Optimism In Novel 'Candide'

The story of Candide was nothing short of dark, minorly humorous, and also action filled. The theme that really seemed to resonate with me the most though was optimism. I know this is essentially the title of the novella, but the theme was so prominent...

Optimism as an Organizational Behavioural Concept

Introduction This research aims to investigate and review the Organizational Behaviour element which is “Optimism”, in order to relate and apply to the daily work and life. This topic is a very important concept that should be developed by theory and practice in management. The...

• Personal Qualities

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Optimism as a Tool to Make Valuable Decisions

Optimism can be considered a dimension of personality leading an individual to expect positive events concerning his or her future. Firstly, this essay tries to describe optimism and its characteristics; secondly, it focuses on some of the most interesting studies that highlight the positive consequences...

Effect of Comparison Standard on One's Optimism Bias

In our daily life, we constantly evaluate the likelihood of possible future events in order to take decisions under uncertainty. However, we do not process the obtainable evidence in an objective and strictly realistic manner. Indeed, our reasoning is inherently subjective and contains systematic biases....

The Glass Half Full: An Outlook On Life

Is the glass half full or half empty? Are you the optimist who is hopeful and buoyant about what awaits you, or are you the pessimist who is surrounded by despondency and insecurity. The division between the two psychological groups can manifest and mould your...

• Personal Philosophy

Optimism As Meaning-Making Despite Life'S Uncertainty

The inquiry about life’s meaning is basically an existential and historical problem. Life has its upside down battle. The battle of finding a meaningful life. "The Case for a Tragic Optimism," by Viktor Frankl marks the circumstances that man’s side of being optimistic in life...

• Personal Life

Best topics on Optimism

1. Resilient and Resilience in Relation to Optimism and Well Being

2. Optimism: Perception of Life is a Matter of Perspective

3. The Point Of View Of Luck: Matter Of Preparation Meeting Opportunity

4. Philosophy and Optimism In Novel ‘Candide’

5. Optimism as an Organizational Behavioural Concept

6. Optimism as a Tool to Make Valuable Decisions

7. Effect of Comparison Standard on One’s Optimism Bias

8. The Glass Half Full: An Outlook On Life

9. Optimism As Meaning-Making Despite Life’S Uncertainty

• Career Goals
• Personal Experience
• Personality
• Perseverance
• Affordable Housing
• Health Insurance

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Student Essays

Essay on Optimism [ Meaning, Concept & Importance for Students ]

Optimism the feelings that reflect self belief, positive and preservice in face of every challenge. It is the belief of having positive attitude to address the core life challenges. Optimism is essentially important in our daily life as we struggle against multiple life challenges on daily basis. The following Essay on Optimism talks about its meaning and concept, why Optimism is important for students etc. This essay is really helpful for students in school exams.

Essay On Optimism | Meaning, Importance of Optimism in Student Life

Optimism is a mental attitude or disposition characterized by hope and confidence in the future. People who are optimistic believe that good things will happen, and they tend to be happier and more successful than those who are pessimistic.

There are many reasons to be optimistic. First of all, optimism is based on a realistic view of the world. People who are optimistic understand that life is full of ups and downs, but they believe that the good times will eventually outweigh the bad.

Secondly, optimism is a choice. People who are optimistic choose to focus on the positive aspects of their lives, and they refuse to let negative thoughts and experiences bring them down. Finally, optimism is contagious. When we surround ourselves with optimistic people, their positive attitude rubs off on us and makes us feel better about ourselves and our lives.

Importance of Optimism for Students:

Students who are optimistic have a better chance of success than those who are not. People who are optimistic are more likely to take risks and try new things, and they tend to be happier and more successful in life. In addition, optimism is a key ingredient for happiness. Students who are optimistic are more likely to be happy and satisfied with their lives, and they are less likely to experience anxiety and depression.

>>>> Read Also : ” Essay On Positive Attitude in Life “

So, why is optimism so important for students? There are several reasons. First, optimism is a key ingredient for happiness. Studies have shown that happy people are more likely to be successful in life than those who are not. Therefore, it stands to reason that students who are optimistic are more likely to be happy and successful. Secondly, optimism is a choice.

People who are optimistic choose to focus on the positive aspects of their lives, and they refuse to let negative thoughts and experiences bring them down. This positive outlook allows them to take risks and try new things, which leads to greater success in life. Finally, optimism is contagious. When we surround ourselves with optimistic people, their positive attitude rubs off on us and makes us feel better about ourselves and our lives.

>>>> Read Also : ” Paragraph On Happiness In Life”

Conclusion:

Optimism is a valuable emotion because it allows us to see the world in a positive light, even when things are tough. It gives us hope for the future and motivates us to keep going, even when we feel like giving up. Ultimately, optimism makes us happier and more successful people.

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Optimism (1903)

Transcription

Part I Optimism Within

Could we choose our environment, and were desire in human undertakings synonymous with endowment, all men would, I suppose, be optimists. Certainly most of us regard happiness as the proper end of all earthly enterprise. The will to be happy animates alike the philosopher, the prince and the chimney-sweep. No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness people cherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring of their life. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in the pride of power, and others in the achievements if art and literature; a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in search for knowledge.

Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession. Could they win some visible goal which they have set on the horizon, how happy they could be! Lacking this gift or that circumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life, - if, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing. As sinners stand up in meeting and testify to the goodness of God, so one who is called afflicted may rise up in gladness of conviction and testify to the goodness of life.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?

My early experience was thus a leap from bad to good. If I tried, I could not check the momentum of my first leap out of the dark; to move breast forward as a habit learned suddenly at that first moment of release and rush into the light. With the first word I used intelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope. Darkness cannot shut me in again. I have had a glimpse of the shore, and can now live by the hope of reaching it.

So my optimism is no mild and unreasoning satisfaction. A poet once said I must be happy because I did not see the bare, cold present, but lived in a beautiful dream. I do live in a beautiful dream; but that dream is the actual, the present, - not cold, but warm; not bare, but furnished with a thousand blessings. The very evil which the poet supposed would be a cruel disillusionment is necessary to the fullest knowledge of joy. Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. It is not enough to say that the twentieth century is the best age in the history of mankind, and to take refuge from the evils of the world in skyey (sic) dreams of good. How many good men, prosperous and contented, looked around and saw naught but good, while millions of their fellow-men were bartered and sold like cattle! No doubt, there were comfortable optimists who thought Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic when he was working with might and main to free the slaves. I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, "Hurrah, we're all right! This is the greatest nation on earth," when there are grievances that call loudly for redress. That is false optimism. Optimism that does not count the cost is like a house builded (sic) on sand. A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

I know what evil is. Once or twice I have wrestled with it, and for a time felt its chilling touch on my life; so I speak with knowledge when I say that evil is of no consequence, except as a sort of mental gymnastic. For the very reason that I have come in contact with it, I am more truly an optimist. I can say with conviction that the struggle which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women. It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life. The world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad thoughts into practical living and till my own field, I cannot reap a kernel of the good.

Thus my optimism is grounded in two worlds, myself and what is about me. I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true. To what good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad. Such is the force of this beautiful and wilful conviction, it carries itself in the face of all opposition. I am never discouraged by absence of good. I never can be argued into hopelessness. Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

As my college days draw to a close, I find myself looking forward with beating heart and bright anticipations to what the future holds of activity for me. My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious. Nay, the desire and will to work is optimism itself.

Two generations ago Carlyle flung forth his gospel of work. To the dreamers of the Revolution, who built cloud-castles of happiness, and, when the inevitable winds rent the castles asunder, turned pessimists -to those ineffectual Endymions, Alastors and Werthers, this Scots peasant, man of dreams in the hard, practical world, cried aloud his creed of labor. "Be no longer a Chaos, but a World. Produce! produce! Were it but the pitifullest (sic) infinitesimal fraction of product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it, then. Up, up! whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night cometh wherein no man may work."

Some have said Carlyle was taking refuge from a hard world by bidding men grind and toil, eyes to the earth, and so forget their misery. This is not Carlyle's thought. "Fool!" he cries, "the Ideal is in thyself; the Impediment is also in thyself. Work out the Ideal in the poor, miserable Actual; live, think, believe, and be free!" It is plain what he says, that work, production, brings life out of chaos, makes the individual a world, an order; and order is optimism.

I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all. I used to think I should be thwarted in my desire to do something useful. But I have found out that through the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless. The gladdest laborer in the vineyard may be a cripple. Even should the others outstrip him, yet the vineyard ripens in the sun each year, and the full clusters weigh into his hand. Darwin could work only half an hour at a time; yet in many diligent half-hours he laid anew the foundations of philosophy. I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot. Green, the historian, tells us that the world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker; and that thought alone suffices to guide me in this dark world and wide. I love the good that others do; for their activity is an assurance that whether I can help that whether I can help or not, the true and the good will stand sure.

I trust, and nothing that happens disturbs my trust. I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme-Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force, and straightway I feel glad, brave and ready for any lot Heaven may decree for me. This is my religion of optimism.

Part II Optimism Without

Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good. All through the years I have spent in college, my reading has been a continuous discovery of good. In literature, philosophy, religion and history I find the mighty witnesses to my faith.

Philosophy is the history of a deaf-blind person writ large. From the talks of Socrates up through Plato, Berkeley and Kant, philosophy records the efforts of human intelligence to be free of the clogging material world and fly forth into a universe of pure idea. A deaf-blind person ought to find special meaning in Plato's Ideal World. These things which you see and hear and touch are not the reality of realities, but imperfect manifestations of the Idea, the Principal, the Spiritual; the Idea is the truth, the rest is delusion.

If this be so, my brethren who enjoy the fullest use of the senses are not aware of any reality which may not equally well be in reach of my mind. Philosophy gives to the mind the prerogative of seeing truth, and bears us not a realm where I, who am blind, and not different from you who see. When I learned from Berkeley that your eyes receive an inverted image of things which your brain unconsciously corrects, I began to suspect that the eye is not a very reliable instrument after all, and I felt as one who had been restored to equality with others, glad, not because the senses avail them so little, but because in God's eternal world, mind and spirit avail so much. It seemed to me that philosophy had been written for my special consolation, whereby I get even with some modern philosophers who apparently think that I was intended as an experimental case for their special instruction! But in a little measure my small voice of individual experience does join in the declaration of philosophy that the good is the only world, and that world is a world of spirit. It is also a universe where order is All, where an unbroken logic holds the parts together, where distance defines itself as non-existence, where evil, as St. Augustine held, is delusion, and therefore is not.

The meaning of philosophy to me is not only its principles, but also in the happy isolation of its great expounders (sic). They were seldom of the world, even when like Plato and Leibnitz they moved in its courts and drawing rooms. To the tumult of life they were deaf, and they were blind to its distraction and perplexing diversities. Sitting alone, but not in darkness, they learned to find everything in themselves, and failing to find it even there, they still trusted in meeting the truth face to face when they should leave the earth behind and become partakers in the wisdom of God. The great mystics lived alone, deaf and blind, but dwelling with God.

I understand how it was possible for Spinoza to find deep and sustained happiness when he was excommunicated, poor, despised and suspected alike by Jew and Christian; not that the kind world of men ever treated me so, but that his isolation from the universe of sensuous joys is somewhat analogous to mine. He loved the good for its own sake. Like many great spirits he accepted his place in the world, and confided himself childlike to a higher power, believing that it worked through his hands and predominated in his being. He trusted implicitly, and that is what I do. Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, "the source and centre (sic) of all minds, their only point of rest."

Thus from the philosophy I learn that we see only shadows and know only in part, and that all things change; but the mind, the unconquerable mind, compasses all truth, embraces the universe as it is, converts the shadows to realities and makes tumultuous changes seem but moments in an eternal silence, or short lines in the infinite theme of perfection, and the evil but "a halt on the way to good." Though with my hand I grasp only a small part of the universe, with my spirit I see the whole, and in my thought I can compass the beneficent laws by which it is governed. The confidence and trust which these conceptions inspire teach me to rest safe in my life as in a fate, and protect me from spectral doubts and fears. Verily, blessed are ye that have not seen, and yet have believed.

All the world's great philosophers have been lovers of God and believers in man's inner goodness. To know the history of philosophy is to know that the highest thinkers of the ages, the seers of the tribes and the nations, have been optimists.

The growth of philosophy is the story of man's spiritual life. Outside lies that great mass of events which we call History. As I look on this mass I see it take form and shape itself in the ways of God. The history of man is an epic of progress. In the world within and the world without I see a wonderful correspondence, a glorious symbolism which reveals the human divine communing together, the lesson of philosophy repeated in fact. In all the parts that compose, the history of mankind hides the spirit of good, and gives meaning to the whole.

Far back in the twilight of history I see the savage fleeing from the forces of nature which he has not learned control, and seeking to propitiate supernatural beings which are but the creation of his superstitious fear. With a shift of his imagination I see the savage emancipated, civilized. He no longer worships the grim deities of ignorance. Through suffering he has learned to build a roof over his head, to defend his life and his home, and over his state he has erected a temple in which he worships the joyous gods of light and song. From suffering he has learned justice; from the struggle with his fellows he has learned the distinction between right and wrong which makes him a moral being. He is sighted with the genius of Greece.

But Greece was not perfect. He poetical and religious ideals were far above her practice; therefore she died, that her ideals might survive to ennoble coming ages.

Rome, too, left the world a rich inheritance. Through the vicissitudes of history her laws and ordered government have stood a majestic object-lesson for the ages. But when the stern, frugal character of her people ceased to be the bone and sinew of her civilization, Rome fell.

Then came the new nations of the North and founded a more permanent society. The base of Greek and Roman society was the slave, crushed into the condition of the wretches who "labored, foredone (sic), in the field and at the workshop, like haltered horses, if blind, so much the quieter." The base of the new society was the freeman who fought, tilled, judged and grew from more to more. He wrought a state out of tribal kinship and fostered an independence and self-reliance which no oppression could destroy. The story of man's slow ascent from savagery through barbarism and self-mastery to civilization is the embodiment of the spirit of optimism. From the first hour of the new nations each century has seen a better Europe, until the development of the world demanded America.

Tolstoi said the other day that America, once the hope of the world, was in bondage to Mammon. Tolstoi and other Europeans have still much to learn about this great, free country of ours before they understand the unique civic struggle which America is undergoing. She is confronted with the mighty task of assimilating all the foreigners that are drawn together from every country, and welding them into one people with one national spirit. We have the right to demand the forbearance of critics until the United States has demonstrated whether she can make one people out of all nations of the earth. London economists are alarmed at less than five hundred thousand foreign-born in a population of six million, and discuss earnestly the danger of too many aliens. But what is their problem in comparison with that of New York, which counts nearly one million five hundred thousand foreigners among its three and a half million citizens? Think of it! Every third person in our American metropolis is an alien. By these figures alone America's greatness can be measured.

It is true, America has devoted herself largely to the solution of material problems-breaking the fields, opening mines, irrigating the deserts, spanning the continent with railroads; but she is doing these things in a new way, by educating her people, by placing at the service of every man's need every resource of human skill. She is transmuting her industrial wealth into the education of her workmen, so that unskilled people shall have no place in American life, so that all men shall bring mind and soul to the control of matter. Her children are not drudges and slaves. The Constitution has declared it, and the spirit of our institutions has confirmed it. The best the land can teach them they shall know. They shall learn that there is no upper class in their country, and no lower, and they shall understand how it is that God and His world are for everybody.

America might do all this, and still be selfish, still be a worshipper of Mammon. But America is the home of charity as well as commerce. In the midst of roaring traffic, side by side with noisy factory and sky-reaching warehouse, one sees the school, the library, the hospital, the park-works of public benevolence which represent wealth wrought into ideas that shall endure forever. Behold what America has already done to alleviate suffering and restore the afflicted to society - given sight to the fingers of the blind, language to the dumb lip, and mind to the idiot clay, and tell me if indeed she worships Mammon only. Who shall measure the sympathy, skill and intelligence with which she ministers to all who come to her, and lessens the ever-swelling tide of poverty, misery and degradation which every year rolls against her gates from all the nations? When I reflect on all these facts, I cannot but think that, Tolstoi and other theorists to the contrary, it is a splendid thing to be an American. In America the optimist finds abundant reason for confidence in the present and hope for the future, and this hope, this confidence, may well extend over all the great nations of the earth.

If we compare our own time with the past, we find in modern statistics a solid foundation for a confident and buoyant world-optimism. Beneath the doubt, the unrest, the materialism, which surround us still glows and burns at the world's best life a steadfast faith. To hear the pessimist, one would think civilization Had bivouacked in the Middle Ages, and had not had marching orders since. He does not realize that the progress of evolution is not an uninterrupted march.

"Now touching goal, now backward hurl'd, Toils the indomitable world."

I have recently read an address by one whose knowledge it would be presumptuous to challenge. In it I find abundant evidence of progress.

During the past fifty years crime has decreased. True, the records of to-day contain a longer list of crime. But our statistics are more complete and accurate than the statistics of times past. Besides, there are many offenses on the list which half a century ago would not have been thought of as crimes. This shows that the public conscience is more sensitive than it ever was.

Our definition of crime has grown stricter, our punishment of it more lenient and intelligent. The old feeling of revenge has largely disappeared. It is no longer an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The criminal is treated as one who is diseased. He is confined not merely for punishment, but because he is a menace to society. While he is under restraint, he is treated with human care and disciplined so that his mind shall be cured of its disease, and he shall be restored to society able to so his part of its work.

Another sign of awakened and enlightened public conscience is the effort to provide the working-class with better houses. Did it occur to anyone a hundred years ago to think whether the dwellings of the poor were sanitary, convenient or sunny? Do not forget that in the "good old times" cholera and typhus devastated whole counties, and that pestilence walked abroad in the capitals of Europe.

Not only have our laboring-classes better houses and better places to work in; but employers recognize the right of the employed to seek more than the bare wage of existence. In the darkness and turmoil of our modern industrial strifes (sic) we discern but dimly the principles that underlie the struggle. The recognition of the right of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a spirit of conciliation such as Burke dreamed of, the willingness on the part of the strong to make concessions to the weak, the realization that the rights of the employer are bound up in the rights of the employed-in these the optimist beholds the signs of our times.

Another right which State has recognized as belonging to each man is the right to an education. In the enlightened parts of Europe and in America every city, every town, every village, has its school; and it is no longer a class who have access to knowledge, for to the children of the poorest laborer the school-door stands open. From the civilized nations universal education is driving the dull host of illiteracy.

Education broadens to include all men, and deepens to teach all truths. Scholars are no longer confined to Greek, Latin and mathematics, but they also study science converts the dreams of the poet, the theory of the mathematician and the fiction of the economist into ships, hospitals and instruments that enable one skilled hand to perform the work of a thousand. The student of to-day is not asked if he has learned his grammar. Is he a mere grammar machine, a dry catalogue of scientific facts, or has he acquired the qualities of manliness? His supreme lesson is to grapple with great public questions, to keep his mind hospitable to new idea and new views of truth, to restore the finer ideals that are lost sight of in the struggle for wealth and to promote justice between man and man. He learns that there may be substitutes for human labor - horse-power and machinery and books; but "there are no substitutes for common sense, patience, integrity, courage."

Who can doubt the vastness of the achievements of education when one considers how different the conditions of the blind and the deaf is from what it was a century ago? They were then objects of superstitious pity, and shared the lowest beggar's lot. Everybody looked upon their case as hopeless, and this view plunged them deeper in despair. The blind themselves laughed in the face of Hauy when he offered to teach them to read. How pitiable is the cramped sense of imprisonment in circumstances which teaches men to expect no good and to treat any attempt to relieve them as the vagary of a disordered mind! But now, behold the transformation; see how institutions and industrial establishments for the blind have sprung up as if by magic; see how many of the deaf have learned not only to read and write, but to speak; and remember that the faith and patience of Dr. Howe have borne fruit in the efforts that are being made everywhere to educate the deaf-blind and equip them for the struggle. Do you wonder that I am full of hope and lifted up?

The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, -the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principal of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think. No loss by flood and lightening, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his tolerance has destroyed.

With wonder and sorrow I go back in thought to the ages of intolerance and bigotry. I see Jesus received with scorn and nailed on the cross. I see his followers hounded and tortured and burned. I am present where the finer spirits that revolt from the superstition of the Middle Ages are accused of impiety and stricken down. I behold the children of Israel reviled and persecuted unto death by those who pretend Christianity with the tongue; I see them driven from land to land, hunted from refuge to refuge, summoned to the felon's place, exposed to the whip, mocked as they utter amid the pain of martyrdom a confession of the faith which they have kept with such splendid constancy. The same bigotry that oppress the Jews falls tiger-like upon Christian nonconformists of purest lives and wipes out the Albigenses and the peaceful Vaudois, "whose bones lie on the mountains cold." I see the clouds part slowly, and I hear a cry of protest against the bigot. The restraining hand of tolerance is laid upon the inquisitor, and the humanist utters a message of peace to the persecuted. Instead of the cry, "Burn the heretic!" men study the human soul with sympathy, and there enters into their hearts a new reverence for that which is unseen.

The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. Ancient prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations. The optimist rejoices in the affectionate sympathy between Catholic heart and Protestant heart which finds a gratifying expression in the universal respect and warm admiration for Leo XIII on the part of good men the world over. The centenary celebrations of the births of Emerson and Channing are beautiful examples of the tribute which men of all creeds pay to the memory of a pure soul.

Thus in my outlook upon our times I find that I am glad to be a citizen of the world, as I regard my country, I find that to be an American is to be an optimist. I know the unhappy and unrighteous story of what has been done in the Philippines beneath our flag; but I believe that in the accidents of statecraft the best intelligence of the people sometimes fails to express itself. I read in history of Julius Caesar that during the civil wars there were millions of peaceful herdsmen and laborers who worked as long as they could, and fled before the advance of the armies that were led by the few, then waited until the danger was past, and returned to repair damages with patient hands. So the people are patient and honest, while their rulers stumble. I rejoice to see in the world and in this country a new and better patriotism than that which seeks the life of an enemy. It is a patriotism higher than that of the battle-field. It moves thousands to lay down their lives in social service, and every life so laid down brings us a step nearer the time when corn-fields shall no more be fields of battle. So when I heard of the cruel fighting in the Philippines, I did not despair, because I knew that the hearts of our people were not in that fight, and that sometime the hand of the destroyer must be stayed.

Part III The Practice of Optimism

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. It be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, them it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy. One who believes that the pain in the world outweighs the joy, and expresses that unhappy conviction, only adds to the pain. Schopenhauer is an enemy to the race. Even if he earnestly believed that this is the most wretched of possible worlds, he should not promulgate a doctrine which robs men of the incentive to fight with circumstance. If Life gave him ashes for bread, it was his fault. Life is a fair field, and the right will prosper if we stand by our guns.

Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.

Who shall dare let his incapacity for hope or goodness cast a shadow upon the courage of those who bear their burdens as if they were privileges? The optimist cannot fall back, cannot falter; for he knows his neighbor will be hindered by his failure to keep in line. He will therefore hold his place fearlessly and remember the duty of silence. Sufficient unto each heart is its own sorrow. He will take the iron claws of circumstance in his hand and use them as tools to break away the obstacle that block his path. He will work as if upon him alone depended the establishment of heaven and earth.

We have seen that the world's philosophers - the Sayers of the Word - were optimists; so also are the men of action and achievement - the Doers of the Word. Dr. Howe found his way to Laura Bridgman's soul because he began with the belief that he could reach it. English jurists had said that the deaf-blind were idiots in the eyes of the law. Behold what the optimist does. He converts a hard legal axiom; he looks behind the dull impassive clay and sees a human soul in bondage, and quietly, resolutely sets about its deliverance. His efforts are victorious. He creates intelligence out of idiocy and proves to the law that the deaf-blind man is a responsible being.

When Hauy offered to teach the blind to read, he was met by a pessimism that laughed at his folly. Had he not believed that the soul of man is mightier than the ignorance that fetters it, had he not been an optimist, he would not have turned the fingers of the blind into new instruments. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. St. Bernard was so deeply an optimist that he believed two hundred and fifty enlightened men could illuminate the darkness which overwhelmed the period of the Crusades; and the light of his faith broke like a new day upon western Europe. John Bosco, the benefactor of the poor and the friendless of Italian cities, was another optimist, another prophet who, perceiving a Divine Idea while it was yet afar, proclaimed it to his countrymen. Although they laughed at his vision and called him a madman, yet he worked on patiently, and with the labor of his hands he maintained a home for little street waifs. In the fervor of enthusiasm he predicted the wonderful movement which should result from his work. Even in the days before he had money or patronage, he drew glowing pictures of the splendid system of schools and hospitals which should spread from one end of Italy to the other, and he lived to see the organization of the San Salvador Society, which was the embodiment of his prophetic optimism. When Dr. Seguin declared his opinion that the feeble-minded could be taught, again people laughed, and in their complacent wisdom said he was no better than an idiot himself. But the noble optimist persevered, and by and by the reluctant pessimists saw that he whom they ridiculed had become one of the world's philanthropists. Thus the optimist believes, attempts, achieves. He stands always in the sunlight. Some day the wonderful, the inexpressible, arrives and shines upon him, and he is there to welcome it. His soul meets his own and beats a glad march to every new discovery, every fresh victory over difficulties, every addition to human knowledge and happiness.

We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius, and many optimistic writers have been read and admired out of all measure to their talents, simply because they wrote of the sunlit side of life. Dickens, Lamb, Goldsmith, Irving, all the well-beloved and gentle humorists, were optimists. Swift, the pessimist, has never had as many readers as his towering genius should command, and indeed, when he comes down into our century and meets Thackeray, that generous optimist can hardly do him justice. In spite of the latter-day notoriety of the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam, we may set it down as a rule that he who would be heard must be a believer, must have a fundamental optimism in his philosophy. He may bluster and disagree and lament as Carlyle and Ruskin do sometimes; but a basic confidence in the good destiny of life and of the world must underlie his work.

Shakespeare is the prince of optimists. His tragedies are a revelation of moral order. In "Lear" and "Hamlet" there is a looking forward to something better, some one is left at the end of the play to right wrong, restore society and build the state anew. The later plays, "The Tempest" and "Cymbeline," show a beautiful, placid optimism which delights in reconciliations and reunions and which plans for the triumph of external as well as internal good.

If Browning were less difficult to read, he would surely be the dominant poet in this century. I feel the ecstasy with which he exclaims, "Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth this autumn morning!" And how he sets my brain going when he says, because there is imperfection, there must be perfection; completeness must have come out of uncompleteness (sic); failure is an evidence of triumph for the fullness of the days. Yes, discord is, that harmony may be; pain destroys, that health may renew; perhaps I am deaf and blind that others likewise afflicted may see and hear with a more perfect sense! From Browning I learn that there is no lost good, and that makes it easier for me to go at life, right or wrong, do the best I know, and fear not. My heart responds proudly to his exhortation to pay gladly life's debt of pain, darkness and cold. Lift up your burden, it is God's gift, bear it nobly.

The man of letters whose voice is to prevail must be an optimist, and his voice often learns its message from his life. Stevenson's life has become a tradition only ten years after his death; he has taken his place among the heros, the bravest man of letters since Johnson and Lamb. I remember an hour when I was discouraged and ready to falter. For days I had been pegging away at a task which refused to get itself accomplished. In the midst of my perplexity I read an essay of Stevenson which made me feel as if I had been "outing" in the sunshine, instead of losing heart over a difficult task. I tried again with new courage and succeeded almost before I knew it. I have failed many times since; but I have never felt so disheartened as I did before that sturdy preacher gave me my lesson in the "fashion of the smiling face."

Read Schopenhauer and Omar, and you will grow to find the world as hollow as they find it. Read Green's history of England, and the world is peopled with heros. I never knew why Green's history thrilled me with the vigor of romance until I read his biography. Then I learned how his quick imagination transfigured the hard, bare facts of life into new and living dreams. When he and his wife were too poor to have a fire, he would sit before the unlit hearth and pretend that it was ablaze. "Drill your thoughts," he said; "shut out the gloomy and call in the bright. There is more wisdom in shutting one's eyes than your copybook philosophers will allow."

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world. In imagination I leave the country which lifts up the manhood of the poor and I visit India, the underworld of fatalism-where three hundred million human beings, scarcely men, submerged in ignorance and misery, precipitate themselves still deeper into the pit. Why are they thus? Because they have for thousands of years been the victims of their philosophy, which teaches them that men are as grass, and the grass fadeth, and there is no more greenness on the earth. They sit in the shadow and let the circumstances they should master grip them, until they cease to be Men, and are made to dance and salaam like puppets in a play. After a little hour death comes and hurries them off to the grave, and other puppets with other "pasteboard passions and desires" take their place, and the show goes on for centuries.

Go to India and see what sort of civilization is developed when a nation lacks faith in progress and bows to the gods of darkness. Under the influence of Brahminism genius and ambition have been suppressed. There is no one to befriend the poor or to protect the fatherless and the widow. The sick lie untended. The blind know not how to see, nor the deaf to hear, and they are left by the roadside to die. In India it is a sin to teach the blind and the deaf because their affliction is regarded as a punishment for offenses in a previous state of existence. If I had been born in the midst of these fatalistic doctrines, I should still be in darkness, my life a desert-land where no caravan of thought might pass between my spirit and the world beyond.

The Hindoos (sic) believe in endurance, but not in resistance; therefore they have been subdued by strangers. Their history is a repetition of that Babylon. A nation from afar came with speed swiftly, and none stumbled, or slept, or slumbered, but they brought desolation upon the land, and took the stay and the staff from the people, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, and none delivered them. Woe, indeed, is the heritage of those who walk sad-thoughted (sic) and downcast through this radiant, soul delighting earth, blind to its beauty and deaf to its music, and of those who call evil good, and good evil, and put darkness for light, and light for darkness.

What care the weather-bronzed sons of the West, feeding the world from the plains of Dakota, for the Oars and the Brahmins? They would say to the Hindoos (sic), "Blot out your philosophy, dead for a thousand years, look with fresh eyes at Reality and Life, put away your Brahmins and your crooked gods, and seek diligently for Vishnu the Preserver."

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope. When our forefathers laid the foundation of the American commonwealths, what nerved them to their task but a vision of a free community? Against the cold, inhospitable sky, across the wilderness white with snow, where lurked the hidden savage, gleamed the bow of promise, toward which they set their faces with the faith that levels mountains, fills up valleys, bridges rivers and carries civilization to the uttermost parts of the earth. Although the pioneers could not build according to the Hebraic ideal they saw, yet they gave the pattern of all that is most enduring in our country today. They brought to the wilderness the thinking mind, the printed book, the deep rooted desire for self-government and the English common law that judges alike the king and the subject, the law on which rests the whole structure of our society.

It is significant that the foundation of the law is optimistic. In Latin countries the court proceeds with a pessimistic bias. The prisoner is held guilty until he is proved innocent. In England and the United States there is an optimistic presumption that the accused is innocent until it is no longer possible to deny his guilt. Under our system, it is said, many criminals are acquitted; but it is surely better so than that many innocent persons should suffer. The pessimist cries, "There is no enduring good in man! The tendency of all things is through perpetual loss to chaos in the end. If there was ever an idea of good in things evil, it was impotent, and the world rushes on to ruin." But behold, the law of the two most sober-minded, practical and law abiding nations on earth assumes the good in man and demands proof of the bad.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. The prophets of the world have been good of heart, or their standards would have stood naked in the field without a defender. Tolstoi's strictures lose power because they are pessimistic. If he had seen clearly the faults of America, and still believed in her capacity to overcome them, our people might have felt the stimulation of his centure (sic). But the world turns its back on a hopeless prophet and listens to Emerson who takes in account the best qualities of the nation and attacks only the vices which no one can defend or deny. It listens to the strong man, Lincoln, who in times of doubt, trouble and need does not falter. He sees success afar, and by strenuous hope, by hoping against hope, inspires a nation. Through the night of despair he says, "All is well," and thousands rest in his confidence. When such a man censures, and points to a fault, the nation obeys, and his words sink into the ears of men; but to the lamentations of the habitual Jeremiah the ear grows dull.

Our newspapers should remember this. The press is the pulpit of the modern world, and on the preachers who fill it much depends. If the protest of the press against unrighteous measures is to avail, then for ninety nine days the word of the preacher should be buoyant and of good cheer, so that on the hundredth day the voice centure (sic) may be a hundred times strong. This was Lincoln's way. He knew the people; he believed in them and rested his faith on the justice and wisdom of the great majority. When in his rough and ready way he said, "You can't fool all the people all the time," he expressed a great principle, the doctrine of faith in human nature.

The prophet is not without honor, save he be a pessimist. The ecstatic prophecies of Isaiah did far more to restore the exiles of Israel to their homes than the lamentations of Jeremiah did to deliver them from the hands of evil-doers.

Even on Christmas Day do men remember that Christ came as a prophet of good? His joyous optimism is like water to feverish lips, and has for its highest expression the eight beatitudes. It is because Christ is an optimist that for ages he has dominated the Western world. For nineteen centuries Christendom had gazed into his shining face and felt that all things work together for good. St. Paul, too, taught the faith which looks beyond the hardest things into the infinite horizon of heaven, where all limitations are lost in the light of perfect understanding. If you are born blind, search the treasures of darkness. They are more precious than the gold of Ophir. They are love and goodness and truth and hope, and their price is above rubies and sapphires.

Jesus utters and Paul proclaims a message of peace and a message of reason, a belief in the Idea, not in things, in love, not in conquest. The optimist is he who sees that men's actions are directed not by squadrons and armies, but by moral power, that the conquests of Alexander and Napoleon are less abiding than Newton's and Galileo's and St. Augustine's silent mastery of the world. Ideas are mightier than fire and sword. Noiselessly they propagate themselves from land to land, and mankind goes out and reaps the rich harvest and thanks God; but the achievements of the warrior are like his canvas city, "to-day a camp, to-morrow all struck and vanished, a few pit-holes and heaps of straw." This was the gospel of Jesus two thousand years ago. Christmas Day is the festival of optimism.

Although there are still great evils which have not been subdued, and the optimist is not blind to them, yet he is full of hope. Despondency has no place in his creed, for he believes in the imperishable righteousness of God and the dignity of man. History records man's triumphant ascent. Each halt in his progress has been but a pause before a mighty leap forward. The time is not out of joint. If indeed some if the temples we worship in have fallen, we have built new ones on the sacred sites loftier and holier than those which have crumbled. If we have lost some of the heroic physical qualities of our ancestors, we have replaced them with a spiritual nobleness that turns aside wrath and binds up the wounds of the vanquished. All the past attainments of man are ours; and more, his day-dreams have become our clear realities. Therein lies our hope and sure faith.

As I stand in the sunshine if a sincere and earnest optimism, my imagination "paints yet more glorious triumphs on the cloud-curtain of the future." Out of the fierce struggle and turmoil of contending systems and powers I see a brighter spiritual era slowly emerge-an era in which there shall be no England, no France, no Germany, no America, no this people or that, but one family, the human race; one law, peace; one need, harmony; one means, labor; one taskmaster, God.

If I should try to say anew the creed of the optimist, I should day something like this: "I believe in God, I believe in man, I believe in the power of the spirit. I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God's world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers." These are the articles of my faith, and there is yet another on which all depends-to bear this faith above every tempest which overfloods (sic) it, and to make it a principal in disaster and through affliction. Optimism is the harmony between man's spirit of God pronouncing His works good.

Optimism Essay

So why be optimistic? There are plenty of reasons! Studies have shown that optimism can lead to better physical health, better mental health, increased resilience in the face of adversity, and even longer lifespans.

Optimism is a very important quality because it helps us stay motivated even when things are not going our way. It makes us believe that everything will eventually work out, and that gives us the strength to keep going.

Pessimism, on the other hand, means focusing on the negative aspects of life. Pessimists tend to see the glass half empty, and they are always expecting the worst to happen. This attitude can obviously lead to a lot of disappointment and unhappiness.

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How ‘Urgent Optimism’ Can Save the World

I used to think optimists were naive and pessimists were smart. Pessimism seemed like an essential feature of being a scientist: the basis of science is to challenge every result, to pick theories apart to see which ones stand up. I thought cynicism was one of its founding principles. Maybe there is some truth to that. But science is inherently optimistic too. How else would we describe the willingness to try experiments over and over, often with slim odds of success?

Scientific progress can be frustratingly slow: the best minds can dedicate their entire lives to a single question and come away with nothing. They do so with the hope that a breakthrough might be round the corner. It’s unlikely they will be the person to discover it, but there’s a chance. Those odds drop to zero if they give up.

Nevertheless, pessimism still sounds intelligent and optimism dumb. I often feel embarrassed to admit that I’m an optimist. I imagine it knocks me down a peg or two in people’s estimations. But the world desperately needs more optimism. The problem is that people mistake optimism for “blind optimism,” the unfounded faith that things will just get better. Blind optimism really is dumb. And dangerous. If we sit back and do nothing, things will not turn out fine. That’s not the kind of optimism that I’m talking about.

Optimism is seeing challenges as opportunities to make progress; it’s having the confidence that there are things we can do to make a difference. We can shape the future, and we can build a great one if we want to. The economist Paul Romer makes this distinction nicely. He separates “complacent optimism” from “conditional optimism.” “Complacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents,” Romer wrote. “Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse. ‘If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.’”

I’ve heard various other terms for this “conditional” or effective optimism: “urgent optimism,” “pragmatic optimism,” “realistic optimism,” “impatient optimism.” All these terms are grounded in inspiration and action.

Read More: 13 Ways the World Got Better in 2023

The reason pessimists often sound smart is that they can avoid being “wrong” by moving the goalposts. When a doomer predicts that the world will end in five years, and it doesn’t, they just move the date. The American biologist Paul R. Ehrlich—author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb —has been doing this for decades. In 1970 he said that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come. And by ‘the end” I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.” Of course, that was woefully wrong. He had another go: he said that “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Wrong again. Ehrlich will keep pushing this deadline back. A pessimistic stance is a safe one.

Don’t mistake criticism for pessimism. Criticism is essential for an effective optimist. We need to work through ideas to find the most promising ones. Most innovators that have changed the world have been optimists, even if they didn’t identify as one. But they were also fiercely critical: no one picks apart the ideas of Thomas Edison, Alexander Fleming, Marie Curie, or Norman Borlaug more than they did themselves.

In particular, if we want to get serious about tackling the world’s environmental problems, we need to be more optimistic. We need to believe that it is possible to tackle them. And if we do, we can be the first generation to achieve a sustainable world.

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The Last Generation is an activist group in Germany, the name implying that our unsustainability will push us to extinction. To force their government into action, some of the group went on a month-long hunger strike in August 2021. It wasn’t a half-hearted effort: several ended up in hospital. They’re not the only ones who feel this way. The global environmental group Extinction Rebellion is also founded on this principle. And the studies show that the notion of us being the ‘last generation’ isn’t far from the minds of many young people.

But I’d like to take the opposite framing. I don’t think we’re going to be the last generation. The evidence points to the opposite. I think we could be the first generation. We have the opportunity to be the first generation that leaves the environment in a better state than we found it. The first generation in human history to achieve sustainability.

Read more: We Need Climate Action Everywhere, All at Once

Yes, that seems hard to believe. I’ll explain why. Here I’m using the term “generation” loosely. I am from a generation that will be defined by our environmental problems. I was a child when climate change really came on the radar. Most of my adulthood will be spent in the midst of the major energy transition. I will see countries move from being almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels to being free of them. I will be 57 when governments hit the “2050 deadline” of reaching net-zero carbon emissions that so many have promised.

But, of course, there will be several generations involved in this project. There are a couple above me—my parents and grandparents—and a couple below me, my future children (and perhaps grandchildren). Generations are often pitted against each other: older generations are blamed for ruining the planet; younger generations are framed as hysterical and indignant. When it comes down to it, though, most of us want to build a better world, where our children and grandchildren can thrive. And we all need to work together to achieve that. All of us will be involved in this transformation.

Urgent optimism isn’t about looking away from the climate crisis that faces us. It’s about facing up to it, not from a place of ‘damage limitation’ but with a clear vision of the future we can build. One that not only stops warming in its tracks but builds a better world for us – all of us – and the species that we share the planet with.

That’s not going to happen on its own. It’s something we need to fight for.

Excerpted from NOT THE END OF THE WORLD by Hannah Ritchie. Copyright © 2024 by Hannah Ritchie. Used with permission by Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. All Rights Reserved.

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The Optimism Challenge Conclusion

How to learn from intentional optimism..

Updated August 10, 2023

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Thanks to everyone who participated in this 90-day journey of purposeful optimism. Reflecting on this period to see what has come out of this journey. Optimism, to me, does not mean looking at the world through rose-colored glasses or downplaying the very real forces of destruction and hatred in the world. It does not mean embracing the "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" philosophy of libertarianism and the prosperity gospel. Optimism does not mean engaging in fantastical thinking, of the sort that wishes away problems and challenges. To me, optimism means claiming the power that we already have to change our personal lives and the world around us.

Philosophers like to engage in speculation on unsolvable problems. These controversies can last for centuries if not millennia. One of these protracted problems is the discussion of free will versus determinism. Proponents of free will believe that the human being has near complete freedom to shape his or her life and that environmental and genetic factors play a very small role or no role in the fate of each individual. The proponent of free will must also downplay the role of social forces: if one believes in radical free will, it shouldn't matter what class, gender , ethnicity , race, and so forth a person inhabits at birth. Free will should be able to overcome any limitation.

This is where we get to the cruel side of some optimistic thinking and the cruel side of belief in free will. Under the rubric of free will, whatever problems you have, they are your own fault. If we believe in this maximal concept of free will, historical oppression and individual circumstances simply do not matter. And of course, believing in maximal free will also requires disbelieving in giant mounds of sociological evidence that race, class, gender, etc., really do determine a great deal about who we become as adults. Privilege, of any sort, is a real factor that is passed down from generation to generation that handily accounts for most of the inequality that we see in the world today.

There are different varieties of determinism. Some emphasize biology, others emphasize social location, still, others will even go into the laws of physics. The determinist will say that we are conditioned by the environment into which we are born. Our parents, our nation, our religion, our social class, and myriad other factors make us who we are. We can no more escape these forces than a grain of sand on the beach can escape from the wind and waves. Each and everything about our personalities, our well-being, and our wealth, comes to us from larger social forces.

I said that this debate between free will and determinism is intractable, and it has its parallel in debates about " nature versus nurture " in psychology and the life sciences. Suffice it to say here that both sides have part of the picture. We do, indeed, have a biological and cultural inheritance, and we also have some freedom of expression to make of ourselves what we will. Our freedom of will is not unlimited, but it can be a powerful factor in what we make of our lives.

Just to illustrate why freedom of will is not unlimited, we need only look to Marvel superheroes. If I had unlimited freedom of will, I would definitely be able to fly like Superman, without the aid of a Boeing 747. If I had absolute freedom of will, I could forsake this human form altogether and exist as a vapor, needing no food or water. I could travel to distant galaxies in the blink of an eye or survey the whole universe at a glance. In other words, I would be nothing less than God. But that kind of freedom is not available to me, or perhaps it is available in the imagination alone.

My freedom of will is much more limited than in superhero fantasy . I can choose whether to turn left or right at the stoplight. I can choose how to interact with my family and friends. I can choose the letters and words that stream out of my keyboard as I write this post. Now some philosophers will argue that I can't prove that I have even this limited sort of freedom. I will agree that I can't prove that I have this sort of freedom: I could be determined even as I write this by the factors listed above. But at a certain point, belief in determinism becomes absurd, and the burden of proof lies on those who would say that I am determined by whether I type x or y on the keyboard.

To bring this back to the discussion of optimism, I would say that optimism is about learning to make the most of the limited freedom of will that we do have. Free will should be treated as a valuable resource that is not to be squandered. Given that I do not have superpowers, I must make use of the normal human powers that I do have. And, as it turns out, the normal human powers are quite fantastic. I can express myself in words. I can run and cycle and swim. I can play musical instruments, study new languages, and read books on philosophy, history, and anything else that I like.

There are myriad avenues of self-expression available to us at relatively low cost to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. If I did not have a single dollar in my pocket right now, I could go down to the public library and read a book. I could make up a new song or draw a picture. The real enemy here is not a lack of resources: it is despair. I can do all of these things if and only if I believe in the opportunities available to me. Now we are getting to the crux of why optimism is necessary: doubt and despair rob us of the limited resources that we do have.

If you are reading these Psychology Today blogs, you are probably already aware that depression and anxiety are paralyzing illnesses that affect people from all economic backgrounds. According to this study reported in Scientific American , depression in the United States accounts for $210 billion worth of economic damage per year, only a small part of which is related to the cost of treatment. I don't give a fig about the bottom line of major corporations, but I do care about the human cost of this tragedy. I do care about the people who, right now, are lying on the couch because they are disabled by depression.

Now optimism will not, by itself, solve a mental health crisis. People with mental illness should, by all means, seek professional help and get a prescription if necessary. I think that optimism does have a sort of preventative value if it is embraced early enough and strongly enough. Positive thinking does not cure everything: it is not magical. But, by embracing an optimistic point of view, on purpose, of my own volition, I avoid some of the worst consequences of a despairing outlook.

At first, I will have to embrace optimism against all contrary evidence. My dark cast of mind sees only gloom all around, but I fight against my own constitution. I would like to curl into a ball and surrender to despair, but, through force of will, I give myself reasons to go on living. Optimism is the power to live, summoned out of thin air. It is an expression of the will to live, and, in this sense, it is necessary for earthbound mortals. As I will believe that life is worth living, I gradually begin to find confirming instances that feed my newfound faith. It gradually becomes easier to inhabit the optimistic frame of mind.

I hope that adequately summarizes the point behind this 90-day challenge. Feel free to repeat as often as necessary. For some of us, the struggle to be optimistic is a difficult one, and it is not mastered all at once. Rather, it begins each and every day as we go about our business. It is an attitude that must be nurtured quite deliberately, and it must begin again after each minor or major setback. Each new situation is a new opportunity to begin again, to develop that more positive frame of mind that enables the belief that life is worth living.

D. B. Dillard-Wright, Ph.D. , is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina Aiken.

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Life Expectations: Optimism vs. Pessimism Research Paper

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Introduction

Optimism and pessimism defined, impact of expectations on optimism and pessimism, impact of optimism and pessimism on life goals and well-being, threats of optimism and benefits of pessimism.

Attitudes towards life and the world around have a great impact on emotional and psychological state of a person, his/her life goals and well-being. Optimism and pessimism are two important characteristics of an outlook on life and environment shared by every person. Optimistic and pessimistic views of people are influenced by life expectations and life circumstances, childhood experience and social position, etc. The more important a goal is to someone, the greater is its value within the person’s motivation. Without having a goal that matters, people have no reason to act. Optimists and pessimists differ in several ways that have a big impact on their lives.

Traditional definitions of optimism and pessimism rest on people’s expectations for the future. Scientific approaches to these constructs also rest on expectations for the future. This grounding in expectancies links the concepts of optimism and pessimism to a long tradition of expectancy-value models of motivation (Aspinwall & Brunhart 1996) The result of this is that the optimism construct, though having roots in folk wisdom, is also firmly grounded in decades of theory and research on human motives and how they are expressed in behavior. “Dispositional optimism refers to generalized outcome expectancies that good things, rather than bad things, will happen; pessimism refers to the tendency to expect negative outcomes in the future” (MacArthur & MacArthur 1999). Optimists are people who expect good things to happen to them; pessimists are people who expect bad things to happen to them. Selingman (1978) explains that In this regard, the optimistic attributional style is the pattern of external, variable, and specific attributions for failures instead of internal, stable, and global attributes that were the focus in the earlier helplessness model. Implicit in this theory is the importance placed on negative outcomes, and there is a goal-related quality in that optimistic people are attempting to distance themselves from negative outcomes. In hope theory, however, the focus is on reaching desired future positive goal-related outcomes, with explicit emphases on the agency and pathways thoughts about the desired goal. In both theories, the outcome must be of high importance, although this is emphasized more in hope theory (Lesko, 2005).

Expectancies are pivotal in theories of optimism, but there are at least two ways to think about expectancies and how to measure them (Lesko 2005). One approach measures expectancies directly, asking people to indicate the extent to which they believe that their future outcomes will be good or bad. Expectancies that are generalized— expectancies that pertain more or less to the person’s entire life space—are what we mean when we use the terms optimism and pessimism . Another approach to optimism relies on the assumption that people’s expectancies for the future derive from their view of the causes of events in the past (Seligman, 1991 cited Lesko, 2005). If explanations for past failures focus on causes that are stable, the person’s expectancy for the future in the same domain will be for bad outcomes because the cause is seen as relatively permanent and thus likely to remain in force. If attributions for past failures focus on causes that are unstable, then the outlook for the future may be brighter because the cause may no longer be in force. If explanations for past failures are global (apply across aspects of life), the expectancy for the future across many domains will be for bad outcomes because the causal forces are at work everywhere. If the explanations are specific, the outlook for other areas of life may be brighter because the causes do not apply there (Meyers, 2006).

Goals are states or actions that people view as either desirable or undesirable. People try to fit their behaviors, indeed, fit their very selves, to what they see as desirable, and they try to keep away from what they see as undesirable. The second conceptual element in expectancy-value theories is expectancy, a sense of confidence or doubt about the attainability of the goal value (Meyers, 2006). If the person lacks confidence, again there will be no action. That’s why a lack of confidence is sometimes referred to as “crippling doubt.” Doubt can impair effort before the action begins or while it is ongoing. Only if people have enough confidence will they move into action and continue their efforts (Lesko, 2005).

Optimism not only has a positive effect on the psychological well-being of people with medical problems but also influences well-being among caregivers. This conclusion was supported in a project that studied a group of cancer patients and their caregivers. Caregivers’ optimism related to lower symptoms of depression, less impact of caregiving on physical health, and less impact on caregivers’ daily schedules. Similar results have been found in research on caregiver spouses of Alzheimer’s patients (Lesko, 2005). Although much of the evidence for the relationship between optimism and psychological well-being comes from samples encountering serious adversity, less extreme events have been examined in other studies (Aspinwall & Brunhart, 1996). For example, the start of college is a difficult and stressful time, and researchers have examined students making their adjustment to their first semester of college. Optimism, self-esteem, and other variables were assessed when the students first arrived on campus

Theory (Lesko, 2005) suggests that pessimists are less likely to make efforts to ensure their well-being. There is, in fact, evidence that pessimists engage in behaviors that reflect a tendency to give up. Some of these behaviors have adverse consequences for wellbeing. Some even have deadly consequences. “To the extent that generalized expectancies are negative, internal, and global, bad health and mental health consequences will follow, a response style termed “pessimistic explanatory style” (MacArthur & MacArthur, 1999). Various forms of substance abuse can be seen as reflecting a giving-up tendency. Substance abuse in general, and excessive alcohol consumption in particular, often is seen as an escape from problems. If so, it follows that pessimists should be more vulnerable than optimists to engaging in this pattern of maladaptive behavior. A sizable body of evidence indicates that pessimism can lead people into self-defeating patterns. The study by Ammar et al ( 2000) found that: “patients who possess a tendency toward either high pessimism or high emotion-focused coping are at a high health risk emanating from both high distress and a slow rehabilitation process’. The result can be less persistence, more avoidance coping, health-damaging behavior, and potentially even an impulse to escape from life altogether. With no confidence about the future, there may be nothing left to sustain life. Optimism may influence the settings that people choose as well as what they do in these settings. Just as important, settings differ in the degree to which they allow positive characteristics to develop and be deployed (Meyers, 2006).

Several theorists have suggested the possibility that such situations do exist, that optimism may be potentially damaging (Lesko 2005) For example, too much optimism might lead people to ignore a threat until it is too late or might lead people to overestimate their ability to deal with an adverse situation, resulting in poorer coping. The idea that optimists may fail to protect themselves against threats is one way in which optimism might work against a person. Another possibility is that the optimist’s worldview might be more vulnerable than that of a pessimist to the shattering impact of a traumatic event. After all, adversity confirms the pessimist’s worldview. Although the development of positive expectations is an important goal of such therapies, it also is important to recognize that it can be counterproductive to try to substitute an unquestioning optimism for an existing doubt. Sometimes people are pessimistic because they have unrealistically high aspirations for themselves. They demand perfection, hardly ever see it, and develop resulting doubts about their adequacy. This tendency must be countered by establishing realistic goals and identifying which situations must be accepted rather than changed.

Expectations for the future have an important impact on how people respond in times of adversity or challenge. Expectancies influence the way in which people confront these situations, and they influence the success with which people deal with them. We have yet to see clear evidence of a case in which having positive expectations for one’s future is detrimental. Many questions remain unanswered: for example, about the precise mechanism by which optimism influences subjective well-being, and about potential pathways by which optimism may influence physical well-being. But people themselves are optimistic about the future of work in this area, optimistic that research will continue to reveal the paths by which positive thinking works to people’s benefit.

• Ammar, R., Ben-Zur, H., Rappaport, B., Uretzky, B.G. (2000). Coping Strategies, Life Style Changes and Pessimism after Open-Heart Surgery. Health and Social Work , 25 (3), 201.
• Aspinwall, L. G., & Brunhart, S. N. (1996). Distinguishing optimism from denial: Optimistic beliefs predict attention to health threats. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, n/a.
• Lesko, W.A. (2005). Readings in Social Psychology: General, Classic, and Contemporary Selections. Allyn & Bacon; 6th edition.
• MacArthur, J.D., MacArthur, C.T. (1999). Optimism/Pessimism. Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health.
• Meyers, D.G. (2006). Social Psychology . McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. Allyn & Bacon.
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By Edwidge Danticat Graywolf: 192 pages, $26 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

Essay collections appear infrequently on the lists of most popular nonfiction — memoirs and historical narratives dominate conversations about the genre. Those forms of nonfiction are wonderful in their own ways. They are also the versions that are closest to fiction. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can exclude the unique offerings of the essay.

An essay collection presents a compressed reading experience, sometimes poetic, and often requiring the author to demonstrate the act of forming an opinion. In its most exalted form, the essay collection is about many things at once. Its goal is not to share information about a topic but to dramatize the formation of a perspective, the development of an informed point of view — a focus that makes the form much more dependent on the writer than the subject matter. “We’re Alone,” a collection of eight short essays by the celebrated Haitian American novelist and short story writer Edwidge Danticat, exemplifies that achievement.

Readers who have appreciated other voice-driven essay collections, such as Zadie Smith’s pandemic-inspired “Intimations,” Erica Caldwell’s “Wrong Is Not My Name,” Jordan Kisner’s “Thin Places,” Cathy Park Hong’s “Minor Feelings” or Elissa Gabbert’s “ The Unreality of Memory ,” will find something familiar with Danticat in “We’re Alone.” The thematic thread of this collection binds loosely around experiences of disconnection or isolation that are exacerbated by a sense of risk predicated on racial, political or social vulnerability. In the essay “A Rainbow in the Sky,” Danticat writes: “The less stable your house, the more terror you feel.” She has elegantly captured that those who face a storm with all foundations intact have a different relationship to the experience than those who were already struggling before it.

In the preface to the book, Danticat discloses that writing essays allows her to feel alone with herself and present with a reader. These pieces represent her outstretched hand, an invitation to spend shared time in reflection. Danticat took the book’s title from the French poem “Plage” by the Haitian writer Roland Chassagne, whose tragic history of imprisonment is also explored in the book. His poem envisions a night spent under palm trees, and the longing for the end of a deep disappointment. Here Danticat finds an early foothold into one of the book’s chief concerns: thresholds where someone’s feelings have been constricted for the sake of other people’s comfort. The title also invokes a plural self, a collective that shares in the writer’s experience of solitude and disaffection.

In the literary essay, a tradition that unites personal insight with anecdotes, evidence and reasoning, one of the most satisfying moments is finding where the writer’s logic breaks and she struggles to fully accommodate the proportions of her subject. Such moments make the inquiries appear vulnerable and honest, even when in reality they are simulations of sense-making. Not all essayists are invested in showing their struggle in understanding or are given the space to do so. But Danticat invites readers into the challenge of putting facts and feelings together. She excels at showing how hard it is to know what the right questions are to ask or how to answer them, and like many of us, she struggles to talk about difficult subjects, especially with her children.

For example, in “By the Time You Read This…,” Danticat debates how much and when to tell her children about how police violence affects the way Black people and immigrants think about safety. She writes, “Each time a young Black person is killed by a police officer or by a vigilante civilian, I ask myself if the time had come for me to write to my daughters a letter about Abner Louima and the long list of nonsurvivors who have come after him.” There is dignity in her doubt, which makes way for the kind of compassion that characterizes these essays.

Danticat’s insights are informed by accounts of the trials of friends and family: Her beloved mother wanders off in an airport; an uncle suffers from an irresolvable, progressive disorientation; Louima, a family friend, is attacked and raped by police; and two mentors, Toni Morrison and Paule Marshall, live through their final months. These experiences emphasize the possibility of loss and disconnection, reflecting a kind of hypervigilance that can be an inheritance of trauma. She approaches these accounts with the courage of an intentional witness, maintaining that perspective even when she looks beyond her own circle. In “Chronicles of a Death Foretold,” Danticat tells the story of a self-proclaimed prophetess who predicted the 2021 assassination of the Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, and the collection’s penultimate essay, “Wozo, Not Mawozo,” examines the weeks following the kidnapping of Christian missionaries in Haiti in 2021.

These are clearly the essays of an accomplished novelist. They move swiftly through detailed anecdotes and varied landscapes, even when the principal action the speaker engages in is “thinking.” There is room in an essay for dramatic action, for the expression of the body as it relates to thought, which was somewhat lacking here. At times, I struggled to see the author as a figure in the dramatic action she cited. Even so, it’s a testament to Danticat’s skill that these brief, intense works about serious matters do not feel heavy. She brings us close enough to the trouble at hand that we cannot mistake what we have seen.

But we are not alone in trying to make sense of feelings that come from becoming a witness to this world. No one is.

Wendy S. Walters is the author of the prose collection “Multiply/Divide” and an associate professor of nonfiction at Columbia University.

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What We Do With What We Have: Björk’s Medúlla Turns 20

Medúlla is arguably the point at which Björk turned from creating pop to a journey into the radically obscure, but in reality it is one of the most fully realised examples of an artist pushing the boundaries of what pop music can be and do, writes Matthew Barton

“The album is about voices,” Björk told Alex Ross of The New Yorker of her burgeoning new album, with the working title of Ink , in early 2004. “I want to get away from instruments and electronics… I want to see what can be done with the entire emotional range of the human voice – a single voice, a chorus, trained voices, pop voices, folk voices, strange voices. Not just melodies but everything else, every noise a throat makes.”

The title of the album may have morphed with the passing of the months, but Björk’s vision remained resolute. That quote could, and does, act as the mission statement for what finally became Medúlla , Björk’s hymn to the earthy and the ethereal, a majestic work that turns twenty this week. 

“About voices” is as explicit as one can get about Medúlla : there are traditionally sung melodies that wouldn’t sound out of place, with different arrangements, on her previous records, but there are whimsical vocal exercises too. There are untethered bursts of enraptured vocalising, but then a round of exquisite choral singing over the brow of the hill. There are low, heavy bass notes supplied by human beatboxers (Rahzel of The Roots, Mike Patton of Faith No More, Dokaka, and Shlomo) that provide a subterranean bed for Björk’s mercurial toplines, and fills delivered by the hyper-ventilations of Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. There are horn sections mimicked by the voice of Gregory Purnhagen, and what sound like alternately warm and menacing instrumental parts that are actually crafted using samples of the voice. There is noodling, there is dissonance, there is experimentation erring on the side of ugliness – and there is much beauty, sombre elegance, and joyful abandon. In short, the human voice acts not as a highbrow concept on which to hang Björk’s latest batch but as the perfect foil for an album that explores – not just through its lyrics – simply what it is to be human.

There is the ode to generosity of spirit and life-giving in ‘Pleasure Is All Mine’, the frustration and disappointment in ‘Where Is The Line’, the loss of identity and attendant self-doubt in ‘Show Me Forgiveness’. There is pleading in ‘Desired Constellation’, the wonder of beauty in ‘Oceania’ and the wonder of the human body in ‘Mouth’s Cradle’ and ‘Triumph Of A Heart’ (surely the pinnacle of the Björkian subgenre of ‘ode to human organs’). Many of us give voice these feelings and emotions in our daily lives, and Björk – alongside the superb musicians and vocalists with whom she worked on Medúlla – quite literally vocalise these feelings and emotions on this masterful opus.

While Björk was never quite a ‘mainstream pop star’, Medúlla arguably activated her latter reputation for wilful obscurity, avant-garde experimentation, leftfield peculiarity – quite forgetting that, despite her previous albums achieving commercial success and even considerable traction on pop radio, Björk was never anything other than experimental – it was a happy accident that her singular orbit was able to coincide with a time when songs like ‘Hyperballad’, ‘Army Of Me’ and ‘Hidden Place’ could become recognisable successes in the arena of chart pop.

For every ‘Human Behaviour’ there is a ‘Pluto’, for every ‘Venus As A Boy’ there is an ‘Enjoy’, something a bit more discordant, aggressive and unsettling. But by the same token, for every ‘Ancestors’ – Medúlla ’s intrepid and arguably maligned exploration of the guttural nuances of Inuit throat singing, performed with gusto by Tanya Tagaq – there is a ‘Desired Constellation’ a song of twinkling beauty and soaring grace; for every ‘Miðvikudags’, one of Medúlla ’s strange and elusive noodling interludes, designed to spotlight “every noise a throat makes,” there is an ‘Oceania’, a bewitching tribute to the exquisiteness of nature.

Indeed, Medúlla is actually home to some of Björk’s most ‘straightforward’ and catchy pop melodies. Dressed in different clothing, ‘Who Is It’ and ‘Triumph Of A Heart’, for instance, could have become this album’s ‘Human Behaviour’ or ‘Possibly Maybe’ and did gain some success at the lower end of the UK Top 40: lingering melodies, punchy choruses, and, in the case of ‘Triumph Of A Heart,’ a banging beat (delivered by Rahzel). ‘Who Is It’ possesses one of the most joyful chorus melodies of her career, and the arrangement – all jerky beatboxing and layered humming – only adds to the thrill. It’s credit to Björk’s artistic confidence that she didn’t attempt to arrange these songs more palatably or hold them back for another project. ‘Who Is It’ had begun life during the Vespertine sessions in 2000, and one can imagine it replete with that album’s glitchy electronica and choral mystery, but Björk was devoted to making it pop of a different sort and committed to the idea that the absence of traditional instrumentation and production can be pop.

Thus, the Brazilian drums in the early versions of ‘Mouth’s Cradle’ were excised, electronic programming was only accepted in Olivier Alary’s subtle, sensuous work on ‘Desired Constellation’, which itself was based on a sample of Björk’s singing on ‘Hidden Place’ from Vespertine and only one instrument – the piano on ‘Ancestors’ and ‘Oceania’ (played by Nico Muhly) – remains. The rest of this landscape, earthy and cave-like, is made up entirely of the human voice – and it is quite astonishing to hear the level of imagination involved in bringing a full-scale work like this to fruition. Medúlla is, to my mind, one of modern pop’s most extreme and successful examples of this kind of committed and courageous artistic experimentation – on the back of beloved albums of such high acclaim as Debut , Post , Homogenic , and Vespertine , Björk was willing to put it all on the line for the sake of art. 

Electronic beats are substituted by beat boxing, the stunning wintry choirs of Vespertine are replaced with choirs that are alternately solemn (the sublime, peerless ‘Vökuró’), unsettling (‘Pleasure Is All Mine’), or terrifying (‘Where Is The Line’). Voices are sampled to mimic the effect of electronics and instruments (‘Mouth’s Cradle,’ the ‘organ’ at the end of ‘Who Is It’ being a sample of Björk’s voice), horn sections are replaced by ‘human trombones’ (‘Triumph Of A Heart’), and she thrives on sequencing extreme contrasts of loveliness (‘Sonnets/Unrealities XI’) with dissonance largely unfamiliar to the Western ear (‘Ancestors’). 

In style and execution, Medúlla has more in common with the output of artists like Meredith Monk, but it is a mistake to think that Björk decided to trade all of her inherent pop smarts for the obscure. Rather, she seems to revel in pushing this music to the limits of what she, her collaborators, and the technology of the recording studio can do; to the limits of what pop can do. That is surely what the best and bravest artists strive for, to push themselves, their listeners, and the form itself. Medúlla is possibly the most striking example of this in Björk’s career, one of constant innovation that moves the pop landscape forward.

Contemporary reviews of Medúlla were positive, in a way that may seem surprising considering that Post , Homogenic , and Vespertine continue to get their flowers today in a way Medúlla doesn’t. “Not only the bravest record she’s ever made,” ran Mojo ’s review, “it’s also one of the strangest and most uncompromising by a major artist to get a commercial release.” Described as “challenging” by Billboard, PopMatters saw it as “enchanting” and, as David Peschek wrote in The Guardian , “ Medúlla may divide Björk’s audience, but, combining intellectual rigour and sensual ravishment, it is brave and unique.”

There is the sense though, that Medúlla began a run of Björk albums with a reputation for being more of a challenge than a joy to listen to. The immediate follow-up, the soundtrack to Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9 (2005), cemented this view with its complete abandonment of pop mores. 2011’s Biophilia took the ‘concept’ mode of Medúlla ’s earthy-meets-ethereal to its zenith and was met with a reception that was again broadly positive but tempered with caveats like Slant ’s view of a “failed and overly formal experiment in hyper-theoretical songcraft.” 

It might be a challenge, but Medúlla is also a pleasure for its own sake. It is complex and rewarding, a distinctive work of layering, texture, and contrasts. “[ Vespertine ] was very introverted,” she told <i>The New Yorker</i>. “It was avoiding eye contact. This one is a little more earthy but, you know, not exactly simple.” Dismissing it merely as ‘work’ for the listener risks that potential listener losing out on some astonishing music. 

‘Where Is The Line’ is probably more intimidating than it might have been with its vocal-only arrangement; Mike Patton’s growling bass voice is bone-shakingly intense, while Björk’s main melodic line is caught between the seesawing edits of queasy back-and-forth male/female choral singing. She would instruct the choir to apply different syllables and vowel sounds to notes and encouraged “a little bit of a pagan edge, a bit of Slavic”. The beatboxers provide the rugged terrain on which the choirs and samples can build. Rahzel is the album’s mainstay in this field and provides the rumbling bottom end, with Japanese peer Dokaka supplying the middle range (including the strangulated noises on ‘Triumph Of A Heart’). On ‘Where Is The Line’ Rahzel fires bullets of aggression, machine-like, through the strange chaos of jarring voices and blunt production. It is brooding, scary, not a million miles from an alternate universe horror film; it has “more of a rock feel” Björk said, with typical understatement. 

‘Vökuró’ is perhaps the most beautiful recording of all in Björk’s catalogue. A twenty-strong group of singers gathered together by Magga Stína specifically to work on this album and known as The Icelandic Choir, give voice to this arrangement of the Jórunn Vidar song, which in turn is an interpretation of a poem by Jakobína Sigurdardóttir. Vidar was an inspiration for Björk, for decades the only female member of the Icelandic Composers’ Society. ‘Vökuró’ is minor-key exquisite: sombre, solemn, everything beautiful and magnificent about the human voice, everything emotive and moving about the power and potency of choral singing.

And what of ‘Submarine’, the murky, velvety duet with Robert Wyatt that sits, impervious, at Medúlla ’s halfway point. It is as dark and enigmatic as its title would suggest, but the moment where the vocal arrangement (built on the pair’s sinister “do-do-do”s) opens out to allow Björk to sing in her higher register, unleashed and rising, evoking a watercraft rising from the depths and breaching before sinking back down into the abyss. It is a thing of rare beauty. 

One cannot talk about a vocal Björk album without talking about her own extraordinary voice – keening and soaring, exultant one moment, cooing and childlike the next; Björk made her name with her astonishing range and versatility, the sweeping movements up the register (think the way she sings “emotional” in ‘Jóga’ or the coda of ‘Bachelorette’), and the veering between naive giggling (‘There’s More To Life Than This’) and guttural animal noises (‘The Modern Things’). Medúlla showcases the breadth of her skills – the power and the restraint – but, in typical Björk fashion, she doesn’t need to be the star of the show. Her voice is central, yes, but it is more the main voice, literally, in a cast where each singer is key to the whole. Listen, for instance, to the mix of ‘Mouth’s Cradle’ and note how her main vocal line is not always as upfront as you might expect. You can’t have a tapestry with a single thread, however vibrant and strong that thread may be.  

‘Ancestors,’ the precursor to challenging experiments like ‘Holographic Entrypoint’ from Drawing Restraint 9, moves Tanya Tagaq front and centre. It takes the joy of Inuit throat-singing competitions – where women face each other and try and make each other smile with the range of noises they can generate – and sculpts it into a song that wordlessly suggests the original conception of the album, or as Björk herself described it, that “5,000-year-old blood that’s inside us all; an ancient spirit that’s passionate and dark, a spirit that survives”. In the run up to the release of the album she also said: “Something in me wanted to leave out civilisation, to rewind to before it all happened and work out, ‘Where is the human soul? What if we do without civilisation and religion and patriotism, without the stuff that has gone wrong?’”

The album was titled Medúlla to mean ‘marrow’ – the essence, the core. That’s true of everything from the naked, bare emotions in the lyrics (“the shame is endless / but if soon start forgiveness / the girl might live”) to the striking artwork (designed by long-time collaborators M/M (Paris) and photographed by Inez and Vinoodh) – Björk masked with a helmet of her own hair, looking direct to camera, imploring, confident, ancient, and new. Whereas Vespertine ’s engine was its introversion, Medúlla – crafted during the early months of motherhood to her daughter Isadora – looks inward in order to look outward: the “[shaking] out of the heavy deep sleep,” the primal as the universal.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Optimism — Philosophical Discussion: Is It Better to be Realistic or Optimistic

Philosophical Discussion: is It Better to Be Realistic Or Optimistic

• Categories: Connection Optimism Reality

About this sample

Words: 948 |

Published: Oct 2, 2020

Words: 948 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the power of realism, the radiance of optimism, the quest for balance, works cited:.

• Athanassoulis, N. (2013). Virtue Ethics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
• Dorsey, D. (2005). The Ethics of Self-Interest. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 1(3), 1-28.
• Fowers, B. J., & Richardson, F. C. (1996). Why is Virtue the Way to Happiness? A Defense of Aristotelian Ethics. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 15(1), 41-51.
• Foot, P. (1978). Virtues and Vices. University of California Press.
• Hursthouse, R. (2010). Virtue Ethics. In J. Skorupski (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics (pp. 445-455). Routledge.
• MacIntyre, A. (2007). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. University of Notre Dame Press.
• Pettigrove, G. (2015). Virtue Ethics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/ethics-virtue/
• Slote, M. (1997). The Ethics of Care and Empathy. Routledge.
• Swanton, C. (2005). Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. Oxford University Press.
• Trianosky, G. (2018). Virtue Ethics and the Challenge of Relativism. Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, 13(1), 1-24.

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Optimism is a fundamental aspect of human psychology that influences individuals' behaviors, emotions, and overall well-being. It is the belief that favorable outcomes are more likely to occur, and it has been studied [...]

Technological optimism is the belief that technology can be used to better our lives and that it can make the world a better place. A lot of people nowadays rely heavily on technology, and there is good reason for it. One [...]

“Pessimistic labels lead to passivity, whereas optimistic ones lead to attempts to change”. Seligman in 1968 came with the concept of ‘learned helplessness’. Seligman along with Steve Maier and Bruce Overmier were studying dogs. [...]

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