Optimism is the Helium in the Balloon

The hope at the bottom of Pandora’s Box

It’s hard to feel optimistic in the middle of a global catastrophe.

Suffering is a familiar theme in the human story. Wars, plague, enslavement, and natural and man-made disasters are nothing new. Human beings have always struggled with the questions of why bad things happen and what to do about them.

What keeps us going when we face life’s harsh realities?

Pessimism, like gravity, seems like the natural response. If you let go of a rock, it will fall. It takes no effort to find sad things. If you are alive, they will find you.

Optimism is a belief or a hope that things will turn out okay. To keep something up in the air takes effort and energy. This goes for feelings and outlook as well as physical objects .

Optimism is the helium in the balloon. But where does that optimism come from?

When I was ten and my dad was making breakfast one morning, he gave me a glass of milk and asked, “Is this glass half full or half empty?” I answered, “it’s half full.” He flipped the chocolate chip pancakes, then went to the sink, filled a glass of water, and drank half of it. “Is this glass half empty or half full?” he asked. This time I answered, “it’s half empty.”

He held up both glasses side by side, and asked “half full or half empty?”

This riddle returned to me in bed that night. I went back and forth in my mind until I finally decided that the choice of whether to see things positively or negatively was mine. I came to believe that it made more sense to focus on what I had than on what I lacked- although I still wanted the pair of Earth Shoes I thought would make me cool and my mom said were a waste of money.

While optimism may have been easy for a kid whose dad made her Mickey Mouse-shaped chocolate chip pancakes, people who haven’t had it so easy have also have found a way to put a voice to their suffering and in doing so, lifted themselves and others up.

The resilience of the human spirit is manifested in the ability to find hope despite circumstances. Maya Angelou, Helen Keller and Victor Frankl are examples of people who transformed their suffering into hope for others.

Optimism is a muscle that requires exercise and is nourished by compassion, empathy and love.

Six years ago I felt seriously low, even hopeless. Both of my parents had died, and I had failed at the biggest thing I ever tried- helping my town build a new library. One Sunday evening, playing crazy eights with my husband and our boys, usually one of my favorite activities, I realized that I felt nothing, a complete lack of joy. I thought “this is what depression feels like.” I tried counting my blessings and convincing myself I should be happy but it didn’t work.

I stopped going to the library and spent more time at my local bar, where I became friends with someone who was even sadder than I was. Barbie was fresh from the psych ward with a body full of meds and a head full of ideas of self-harm. She told me that it hurt to be alive. Dulling the pain with alcohol, drugs and sex was a stopgap until she could end things for good. I could relate to her feeling of hopelessness even though mine was from what I had gone through and hers was ongoing. We went for walks, we drank whisky and we suffered hangovers together. Feeling compassion for my friend tapped into the well of loving support my parents had given me. I wanted to help her feel better. I found that being hopeful for her, little by little helped me feel optimistic for myself. Then one day my friend said “Someday I’d like to live in a cabin in the woods with a big fluffy dog and a bathtub deep enough to submerge my knees and boobs at the same time.” For the first time since I’d known her, she was talking about a future.

Optimism is the hope at the bottom of Pandora’s box. It is a tiny voice that says “don’t give up.”

I believe that for every bad thing in this world, there is at least one good thing. Try to find one good thing today and share it.

Karen’s goals for 2021 include finishing her MFA thesis and dressing like a Star Trek alien from a utopian planet. Her Creative Nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Brevity, NPR’s The New Normal, Straw Dog Writer’s Guild Pandemic Poetry and Prose, Multiplicity and Voices of the Valley Anthology.