Negative people will tell you that they are not negative. They are only realists. You’re the airy fairy optimist who has it wrong and its only a matter of time before it all goes to shit. But an optimist knows that it never goes to shit. It can’t because life is a whole and cannot be broken down into pieces for analysis. For every action there is an natural and equal reaction. Some days you feel great and others not so much. Some of the things you do work and others do not.
When you are in the middle of practicing your Cello or in the midst of a deep edit of a book you have written, you can’t see the improvement or the life you have designed as a result of practicing and writing. But none of that happens if you are chronically negative.
Being chronically negative keeps you down but it gets worse. You burn yourself out quickly and so a negative person seems out other negative people to be miserable with. What is truly sad about pessimism is that it also seeks out positive people and in a twisted way believes that telling them the truth, bringing them to reality, will make their life better. All it is going to do is bring them down so that they don’t dare to fly too close to the sun.
I have learned this from the inside. I am a recovering pessimist or realist you could say.
I always thought that great things were meant for other people. I thought I was worth something, but was never quite good enough to belong in any conversation, and certainly too shy to do anything about it.
I am not sure where all this positivity is coming from. I would guess it comes from the hours and hours of audiobooks I’ve listen to that have fed my soul. It must also be coming from the positive people I keep close to my heart and the distance I have created with pessimists, especially the gossiping one.
We get one life. We get to decide if we want it or not. Can’t live it half assed.
Life is beautiful. We are great. That’s the real story.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@nate_dumlao
