W
wolfshadow
Guest
I've hogged rather a lot of thread space today so I promise to make this my last contribution for....well at least for another 12 hours, even I require sleep sometimes.
A question that's been needling me today is as follows; "why is it so bloomin difficult to be optimistic"?
To some, such as my well meaning but incorrigibly loud sister, no matter how grim the past and present may appear it seems to do nothing to budge her unwavering conviction that the future is something to look foward to with abject relish. It never ceases to amaze me and it's probably no coincidence that she also has many good friends.
From my point of view, it seems almost superhuman that someone can be so persistantly optimistic and I keep wondering whether it's real or simply an impenatrable wall of denial constructed to fortify one from bleak reality.
Look at how cynical and jaded I have become, how religously I cling to the reasons why things can't or won't happen and how I reflexively dismiss self belief as delusional. As I said in the very first post I ever submitted this is because I have always been a "defeatist".
When I was a little boy, certain things came very easily to me; reading, writing and drawing for example. I became far too complacent and as time passed, began to neglect my schooling. The praise I received as a junior was quite detrimental to my modesty, as far as I was concerned I had been blessed with a modcum of intellegence and I had nothing else to prove. I was also quite sure that I could play catch up any time I so chose. In effect, academically speaking, I had developed a strain of the "bully complex" meaning that I was so overconfident in my abilities that I thought the tasks set by my tutors were superfluous nonsense.
Predictably, what entailed was that I went from being a reasonably gifted student to someone who had been well overtaken by the masses. In a fashion consistent with the "bully" mentality, when I began to realise how badly I was doing, rather than gritting my teeth and gutting it out, I simply gave up trying.
Unfortunately this pattern has manifested itself throughout my adult life; adversity equals rapid ignominious exit. A grave fear of the humiliation of trying and failing. But what really could be more humiliating than a man in his prime years having to sleep on the sofas of reletives because he hasn't got the resources to put a roof over his own head? In earnest, very little.
That ladies and gents is where my pessimism has landed me. Granted there are many other associated problems that I've picked up along the way but I feel sure that many of them would not have become material if I had just plucked up the balls and energy to make a real stab at doing something (if you're reading through this now please don't misconstrue it as a tale of recrimination or of self hatred, it is neither. I'm actually in a pretty good frame of mind, possibly the most enervated I've been for a very long time).
It's still not too late for things to be reversed for me or for anyone who is approximately close to my kind of situation and I refuse to believe otherwise but how....where do you begin to find the will?
A question that's been needling me today is as follows; "why is it so bloomin difficult to be optimistic"?
To some, such as my well meaning but incorrigibly loud sister, no matter how grim the past and present may appear it seems to do nothing to budge her unwavering conviction that the future is something to look foward to with abject relish. It never ceases to amaze me and it's probably no coincidence that she also has many good friends.
From my point of view, it seems almost superhuman that someone can be so persistantly optimistic and I keep wondering whether it's real or simply an impenatrable wall of denial constructed to fortify one from bleak reality.
Look at how cynical and jaded I have become, how religously I cling to the reasons why things can't or won't happen and how I reflexively dismiss self belief as delusional. As I said in the very first post I ever submitted this is because I have always been a "defeatist".
When I was a little boy, certain things came very easily to me; reading, writing and drawing for example. I became far too complacent and as time passed, began to neglect my schooling. The praise I received as a junior was quite detrimental to my modesty, as far as I was concerned I had been blessed with a modcum of intellegence and I had nothing else to prove. I was also quite sure that I could play catch up any time I so chose. In effect, academically speaking, I had developed a strain of the "bully complex" meaning that I was so overconfident in my abilities that I thought the tasks set by my tutors were superfluous nonsense.
Predictably, what entailed was that I went from being a reasonably gifted student to someone who had been well overtaken by the masses. In a fashion consistent with the "bully" mentality, when I began to realise how badly I was doing, rather than gritting my teeth and gutting it out, I simply gave up trying.
Unfortunately this pattern has manifested itself throughout my adult life; adversity equals rapid ignominious exit. A grave fear of the humiliation of trying and failing. But what really could be more humiliating than a man in his prime years having to sleep on the sofas of reletives because he hasn't got the resources to put a roof over his own head? In earnest, very little.
That ladies and gents is where my pessimism has landed me. Granted there are many other associated problems that I've picked up along the way but I feel sure that many of them would not have become material if I had just plucked up the balls and energy to make a real stab at doing something (if you're reading through this now please don't misconstrue it as a tale of recrimination or of self hatred, it is neither. I'm actually in a pretty good frame of mind, possibly the most enervated I've been for a very long time).
It's still not too late for things to be reversed for me or for anyone who is approximately close to my kind of situation and I refuse to believe otherwise but how....where do you begin to find the will?
