something to say for positivism

i'm a half-full kind of guy, life is difficult and tedious and complicated and tiresome and...wonderful and intricate and tender and light and interesting and arresting. i choose to see life as being good. now, it's not great, or, at least it's not always great, but that's not to say that it's not damn good. i don't always see the bright side, i'm not ignorant. i don't always expect the best, i'm not naive. but, i don't think the world will implode if something doesn't goes as planned or someone doesn't arrive on time. life is such a silly endeavor, is it critical that i show up at 5pm if we can get to dinner at any time?

lately i think i've been around a lot of negative people, or people that are sort of on the half-empty team; it's wearing on me. people that don't see the flippancy in it all, the evanescence of life, we live such short lives, and to take it all so serious and to see it so dark depresses me. maybe these people think their lives are of the utmost importance, that when bad things happen they happen only to them or more often to them than other people. or, something else i've been considering, would it be safe to say that when a person has the ability for above average complex, critical thinking, that that person will be more likely to be on the half-empty team? you know, do dullards really think their lives are all that bad? i don't know, but i think it's far more likely that someone with the ability to not only see the awful events in life, but think about them in abstract and complex ways would end up concluding that life is not too good. i mean, if we look at the news, the economy is failing, we're in two wars, our last president spied on his own citizens and his administration approved torture, every news channel swears we'll all die from bird flu, swine flu or SARS. if you can wrap your brain around how awful some of those things are, i guess you're sort of susceptible to being a bit of a pessimist. but wake up! snap out of it! life isn't swine flu. it's just not. sure, people get hit by lightning, but i'm not going to live my life trying to actively avoid being struck, it doesn't work for me, i don't live life behind hand sanitizer.

when i think about a long-term relationship, a half-empty person will require too much of my energy, will tamper with too many free thinking sessions. i'm not always optimistic, so i'll no doubt need a teammate, and am a willing teammate for the wife i'll one day have, but joining a team that can't appreciate the sunset because it's too early in the morning or doesn't want to get caught in a rainstorm because her shoes could get ruined or doesn't want to hightail it to the mountains for the day because it's too far a drive, well, that sort of life, it's just too strenuous for me, i only have so much energy, and investing it in trying to make someone smell the flowers is not how i intend on spending the rest of my days.