Optimism

 

 

I have started a new journal (I need another one like a hole in the head).  I am going to art journal around words that jump out for me.  Optimism is a word bantered about but do we really know what optimism means and connotates?

We have two years of lost dreams, loss of sense of personal control out in the world, loss of things that brought us joy, and loss of normal socialization and social interaction.  It, truly, has been a test of rule-following and our ability to trust science as experts for the good of all.  We rebelled, many of us, in our own little ways, to change.  The world changed and took us with it whether we were rule-followers or not and this became absolutely evident in the ways we dealt with Global change.

My father rebelled against the Changing of time to Daylight Savings Time.  He would never set his wristwatch to show the change.  (In latest years of his life he did change his time because he forgot which time he had on his watch).  Every time anyone would ask for the time, he would say: “The Lord’s time or the devil’s time?”  It was his little rebellion to change.  Yet, he had been an 11 year old boy driving a buckboard wagon from Idaho to Alberta to build a homestead for the family.  He went from that, to all the electronical changes (television to computers) to seeing man land on the moon.  Life changed in his 90 years down here on Mother Earth and he had trouble accepting that a pill could cure a toe to modern medicine miracles.   He was a quiet ‘rebeller’, but we grew up seeing his quiet little rebellions and knew the futility of some rebellions against change.  He lived a life of acceptance what he could and compliance.  He went from optimism, to skepticism, back to optimism again as he lived a ‘It is what it is’ attitude.  Always, in his surrender and acceptance was a consciousness of not having control and what would the Lord do in such decisions.  That generation of elders who went through the dirty thirties new struggle and how to stay optimistic while going through it.

Perhaps that is a reason some of us have struggled with optimism – we have not been truly tested before.  The trails of acceptance and maintaining optimism had only become trite phrases that satisfied some, but rankled others.  I am a ‘rankler’ yet am able to accept and surrender when I feel it is hopeless to do otherwise, but not without my little  ‘say so’. 

So often our optimism is thwarted by our own self-talk and our expression of optimism that was not really in the language because negative self-talk was what kept us safe, alert/wary, and change was a slower progression, except change of location for hunter gathers, until the Trail of Tears for many.  The Dirty Thorites saw families uprooted from their pioneer living to trying to accept the change in nature and society they had never witness or experienced before.  Negative self-talk now damages us as change is difficult for us.  We do not like being forced to change.  This kind of change adds stress, anxiety and anger.  And we all go through such things in our own unique ways.  We all tend to find confirmation of our opinions, and we seek others and opinions that affirm ours.  It is not always positive nor I is always negative, but negative is easier to show because we sense a bigger sense if control, or lack of such, in big situations.  Optimism is a positive aspect.  Those who have developed their sense of optimism deal better with change. 

Acceptance of change can come very slowly, for some.  For them, it is a simple matter of just putting one foot in front of the other and getting through it, whatever it is.  After my ‘little rebellions and acceptance that I can not control all things, I quietly surrender to ‘it IS what it Is’.  I’ve had my say, then I walk my walk and I tend to just get through such things the best I can.    Some times it is very difficult to stay positive, but a positive attitude can really help to get through such things that make us change more than we wish to. 

Optimism is a whole lot about being grateful and living a life of gratitude that is full of lessons that make us better people.  The negative self-talk that we do doe nothing for us except rob us of peace, maintain a sense of happiness, maintain a sense of calm, maintain a sense of connectedness to the spirit and lessons when things are tough. 

Practicing positive self-talk can do more to prepare us for big changes.   It builds, in us, a sense of grace and dignity.  It builds resilience.  Optimism is saying, and living in a way, that “I can not control this YET!  Then begin the change towards hoe for a better time, a better thing, a better everything and we settle into a peaceful attitude of acceptance with personal changes, after all.  Optimism creates an excess of possibilities to grown, to developing a sense of self-confidence.  Optimism reduces the sense of conflict.  Optimism is what helps some strange or tragic incident into something we can bear.  Hope, after all, is all we have in some circumstances.  Everyone has their own level of acceptance, and sense of hope.

I know who I am and what I believe in.  I am one who crawls off into the forest, like a wounded wolf, when Life hurts.   My rebellions are mostly verbal until I get tired of y little rebellion and simply comply to what is asked of me, or demanded of me.  As we sit on the brink of WW11, when someone we believe is evil is trying to make huge changes in society/global, the only thing I, as a global person, can do, is hope for the best, for I do not have any control in this.  I can only control myself and my attitude.  My personal expressions of optimism stirs the very ether.  In that ether are a thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand like-minded people who are, as well, optimistic that what is to be will be.

How are you dealing with life in optimistic ways?   

©Carol Desjarlais 3.12.22

 As I contemplated the word "optimism" and my namy circular thoughts about such, I grabbed my newest art journal title "words" and began a two page spread on the word.  Some poet said, "Hope is a small bird"  This moved me to begin this page and the expression of optimism being as small as a bird sometimes, but is there if I look.