B +ve

In the past 20 and odd years of my life, one of the words in English that has become so dear to me is “optimism “. Synonymous to “positive thinking” this word has a charm on its own. It was during my college days that this word became very familiar to me , especially because we were geared up for campus recruitment and corporate interviews. We were expected to develop the so called “Right Attitude” in which optimism played a key role.

Irrespective of whether we understood the substance of such words truly or not, we knew by then, that such words had the magic powers of taking us closer to what we were longing to hear after a campus interview
“ Congrats!!..You’ve made it!!!”

Back then, I was not quite sure how I could fit “optimism” in all spheres of my life. I could only very clearly distinguish every happening in my life as either a “positive one” or a “negative one”. I was not sure how I could apply and associate the concept of optimism with an incident that could bring even a slightly negative impact on my day to day existence.

But as life stretches out and we come face to face with a wide spectrum of varying experiences (both good and bad ones) we learn to tweak our perspective a little so that it will keep us alive and kicking at all times. The vital difference being, we learn that instead of calling an experience “bad” , it only takes the slightest of efforts to call that same experience as one with “less of goodness” in it.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose. -Kahlil Gibran

The rose being rose and the thorn being thorn , optimist gives emphasis to one aspect of it , while the pessimist views it from a different angle. At the end of the day, what is important for us is an attitude that will keep us moving forward at all times. It is here that optimism outweighs pessimism.

However ,these days we have given certain facets of pessimism a glossy finish by calling it “Contingency Management”. This of-course is a necessary devil.

As and when S listens to “Bhagavad Gītā” I get the privilege of over-hearing bits and pieces of it, while my primary job is to dance to the tunes of my the my little honey. Gītā says that there is nothing pleasant or unpleasant in absolute terms ,it is all in our mind and the way we look at things. Although at the outset this seems to be a very revolutionary thought to ingest, on a bit more of scrutiny there does seem to be some truth in this.

From the moment we embark upon our journey of life on this earth, we (our minds) are being constantly fed with ideas about what is good and what is bad. By the time we reach our adult-hood our minds are predisposed to gauge every happening in our life in a certain unique way:
Either as favourable or unfavourable to us.

While favourable incidents can cause mental comfort , unfavourable incidents cause turbulence in our system and disturb our mental equilibrium. That is when optimism comes in handy. When we compare the cause of our disturbance with a relatively much more stressful situation (hypothetical) , our mind automatically gets consoled that what we are currently facing may not be all that painful as it appears.

For instance, when S and I travel by car and get caught in the middle of a nerve-wracking traffic jam we always have two choices before us. We could either curse our stars for the unnecessary waste of fuel in our car or feel happy that at least this way we are forced to spend some time with each other.

But one thing that I find difficult to come to terms with , is that S always thinks both the two options stated above are worth “cursing his stars”!!!!