The Pessimist Trap

 

 

I know several people who could be called pessimists. Pessimists tend to see the world as a place where bad things happen, evil is stronger than good, that, in general, things will turn out poorly in the end, and that human nature is untrustworthy and basically bad. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was showing his pessimism when he said that it is unchangeable human nature to be greedy, untrustworthy, violent, and dishonest, which dooms us to a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”   Pessimists tend to look for the negative in everything such that every silver lining has a dark cloud, and a half glass of water is always seen a half empty rather than half full.  With as much conflict, strife, ignorance, and stupidity in the world, it is often easy to think we are always headed toward the worst.

I used to be a pessimist who found fault with everyone and everything.  But at the time I would have said I was a realist because everything I said was bad really was bad.  However, what I didn’t realize at the time was that my negative and highly critical habit of mind resulted in me only looking for the flaws in everything.   And if that’s what you are looking for you surely will find it because it’s there in abundance.  What I missed, though, was that I wasn’t seeing the good that was there because I wasn’t looking for it!    

It is a fact that a glass of water is half empty, but it is equally a fact that it is also half full of water.  Seeing the emptiness is only seeing half of what is there.  There is also the fullness.  Seeing only half of reality is definitely not being realistic.  When I started to make an effort to look for the good, I discovered that it was also there.  I had been blind to the large amount of goodness in the world.  But I came to understand that my seeing the world pessimistically was a choice on my part.  So now the question becomes:  Is it a wise choice?  There are several very good reasons to think that it is not.      

First, seeing things from a pessimist point of view does not help the state of the world in the slightest. 

Second, if I think everything is bad and will have a bad ending, I stop trying.  I give up.

Third, seeing the world as bad and doomed has a toxic effect on the quality of my life in the present moment.  It does not feel good to walk around seeing the world as a huge pile of garbage.  Doesn’t it make sense to look for the good and try to improve the world or some small part of it?  We do have a choice here. 

It is possible to actually cultivate optimism in ourselves. We do this by making it a practice to look for the good that exists every day.  These do not have to be big things.  It could be small acts of generosity or kindness as well as larger acts of speaking truth to power or risking one’s life for a worthy cause. In doing this we are retraining ourselves to notice the good.

We can also practice cultivating gratitude for the good that exists.  We can meditate and silently express our gratitude for the good that exists in specific people or actions:  “Thank you Jim for being a wonderful friend.” This can be done as a formal sitting meditation practice, or done intermittently at various times throughout our day.  When I do this, I am always amazed by how much there is that I have to be grateful for.

And let us not forget the practice of mindful ingestion.  The things that we take into our consciousness have a profound effect on us.  We can limit our exposure to things that are negative and toxic:  news media, certain friends and co-workers, movies, books, music, and more.  This is easy to do and makes a huge difference.

It is a fact that we find what we are looking for.  If you look for dishonesty, cruelness, and exploitation you will surely find it because it is there.  But the reverse is equally true because if you start looking for kindness, wisdom, and caring you will surely find it because it is also there.  We can choose to practice doing this.

I think people often adopt pessimism as protection against getting their hopes up and then being disappointed.  If we expect the worst, then,when it happens, we are not crushed and disappointed.  If something good happens you can enjoy it—though a pessimist will always try to find something bad even in outcomes that are very good: “It won’t last” or “Yes, but there is still all this other bad stuff that remains unaffected.”  Expecting the worst may protect us from disappointment but it also “protects” us from joy, peace, feeling energized, and taking positive action.  In some cases, our attitude of doom is simply a handy excuse for not trying. 

It is also important to realize that the world often looks bad simply because it doesn’t match up with the way we think it should be.  The world often falls short of our “shoulds,” but maybe the remedy is to remove our unrealistic “shoulds.”  If we expect life to always meet our personal definition of fair (“I should never be the recipient of, or have to deal with, unfairness”) we will be disappointed and suffer constantly and unnecessarily.  The universe never signed a contract agreeing to make events conform to our ideas of what is right and fair.  Things are not always fair.  We don’t get to choose the events that make up world history, but we always have the choice as to how we respond to those events. 

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that everyone has the seeds of pessimism as well as greed, anger, and violence in them.  But all of us also have seeds of hope and optimism, kindness, compassion, and love. The seeds that we water by giving them our attention are the ones that grow and become strong.  The seeds that we don’t feed shrink and become weak.  Let us water the right seeds.

 

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