On Optimism
Optimism isn't a cheery ignorance of life as it is. It's defiance, a hope against hope.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. ~Viktor Frankl
A few personal words. As a poet, thinker, I’ve spent my share of nights in the car, the middle of the night - thinking what’s the use of it all? Why not end it here?
I think we all have these moments of despair that we keep within ourselves. Our own private torture chamber. Moments when things don’t add up. The center no longer holds. These moments get even more common as one ages and the pretense, green shoots, sparkles of life begin to fade and life quickens.
But let me tell you a trick that I constantly use to get me out of this “trap” and dark hole. Always, the thought comes over me, so what if I were already dead? But yet, contradictorily, by some miracle, still alive? Isn’t now, life all just extra, a gift? A kind of, It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey moment. Cioran relates this jump into the surreal well, as only he can or could.
I had a fantastic fit of despair, I threw myself on the sofa and said, "I can't take it anymore." And my mother said this: "If I had known, I would have had an abortion." That made an extraordinary impression on me. It didn't hurt me, not at all. But later I said, “That was very important. I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?" ~Emil Cioran
So I take another drink from my bottle. Shut off the car and go into the house and fall asleep. I wake up and all is new, reborn, extra, the icing on the cake. The day is good again. Nothing has changed but my own inner philosophy, my tire now has air in it.
I’ve had this same kind of “letting go” happen during my teaching career. Teaching can be stress-filled. It builds and then suddenly I’ll have a moment of “It doesn’t matter. So it matters.” A surreal approach rejuvenates my teaching and I just throw out the normal, plodding lesson plans and just “let it be”. The authentic person appears in the face of one’s own mental self-annihilation and death.
One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness. ~Albert Camus
So just saying - optimism is a throwing of yourself into the unknown. A kind of defiance. A stance against all that like throw at us, so painfully. Metaphysical slight of mind. A stance that says …
“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” - Godot, Samuel Beckett
The present truly is the present. Our sufferings come from our clinging to the past. Rather, let us cling to the rock of the now. Defiant for we are still here, despite it all.
Get On With It
If you don’t like what you got,
give it away, crush it, blow it up.
Get on with it ….
If your check isn’t in the mail.
If your boat didn’t come in.
Don’t wait.
Screw ’em,
screw ’em and the universe,
laugh, laugh loudly,
go have a beer
roll in the wet grass,
don’t stop or slow down.
Get on with it …..
If you can’t stand the President,
don’t whine like a ninny.
Go over to the window
and scream it for all to hear,
for the people to know
Don’t hesitate.
Get on with it ….
If the car’s not starting.
The neighbors are too loud.
You can’t stand your wife,
your life ….
walk away,
even if just for a while.
Screw it,
the world won’t stop its nonsense,
so why should you.
Get on with it ….
If you’re constipated.
If your teeth have all fallen out.
If you can’t get it up.
If your stocks are down.
Pour a stiff drink.
Run the ice over your tongue.
You’re here.
It’s all good.
Get on with it …..
Wow. What a poem, David. I really believe that unrealistic optimism crushes us and it's bravery when we stop being unrealistically hopeful about sth that won't get better.