Healthy optimism

It was a frustrating situation to be in, but thankfully I was able to figure out how to maintain these commitments with the generous help of family, friends and  colleagues. 

Was there any guarantee that I would be able to successfully handle this situation? No. 

This just happened to be a challenge that I was able to figure out and resolve in time. 

As an overly optimistic teenager, I tended to disregard the warnings of my much wiser parents and peers that the world is unfair and unpredictable. Other than the occasional unwelcome cold (which, by the way, I happened to also have today), I very naively expected life to be a frictionless, smooth-sailing, and predictable affair. 

As I’ve grown older and joined the real world, I’ve learned that this kind of optimism serves almost no one. It sets unreasonable expectations which inevitably leads to frustration, disappointment, and a defeating sense of failure. 

But that isn’t to say that optimism is totally useless or dead either. 

There is a kind of healthy optimism that makes sense to have — the kind that recognizes an unpredictable and unfair life but also recognizes your capacity to figure out challenging moments in life as they arise. 

To have a healthy sense of optimism isn’t about hoping for a perfect world, it’s about resolving to be resilient in a decidedly imperfect one. 

It’s about accepting the facts of your situation (convenient and inconvenient), doing what you can, being grateful for yours wins, and having the humility to accept and learn from the times when--not if, but when--things don’t go according to plan.