One of my favorite shows of all time is Avatar, The last airbender. It’s filled with adventure, humor, and the occasional nugget of wisdom. One scene has been on my mind lately from one of the first episodes. It has the following dialogue between two siblings:

Katara: (to Sokka, excited) Do you think we’ll really find airbenders?

Sokka: Do you want me to be like you or totally honest?

Katara: Are you saying I’m a liar?

Sokka: I’m saying you’re an optimist. Same thing, basically.

While perhaps meant to be amusing, I feel like this small exchange brings up so much to consider.

To some degree, I think Sokka has a point. If he were to express that he thinks they’ll find airbenders while inwardly believing they won’t, I wouldn’t say he’s being “totally honest”. If he thought it was possible but unlikely, he could potentially still hope for it, but I don’t imagine he would spend too much of his resources betting on it.

One thing I want to focus on in this post is the concept of optimism. I feel like optimism is generally considered a good thing. It’s often associated with people who are happy and pleasant to be around. When I think of optimism, I can think of two primary connotations:

• Looking on the bright side
• Assuming the best in life

Looking on the bright side has been one of the best things for helping me to achieve happiness in life. While I can’t control everything that happens regarding my circumstances, I can often at least influence how I choose to feel about it. I can choose what to focus on. For example, I can dwell on all the ways the world can seem unfair. I can dwell on the pain caused by death, war, and hunger. I can dwell on my fears and my failures. While I wouldn’t advocate for ignoring these things, I wouldn’t want to dwell on them and allow myself to fall into depression.  I would prefer to dwell on the things I’m grateful for, to dwell on things I’m excited about, or dwell on my ambitions and successes.

As for assuming the best in life, I would divide this further into two categories:

• Things that I have no control over (E.g the past, or current facts of reality)
• Things that I may be able to influence

For things that I have no control over, I think to “believe what I want to believe” is terrible advice.  I think it is unwise to assume the best will always happen. I think if I were to assume the laws of physics will change to suit my current needs, I am doing myself a disservice. I think that it is understanding and taking advantage of the laws of nature that gives me power.

For things that I can influence, I feel like this is where optimism’s true power comes from. I believe nothing would happen if no one chose to act. While I think goals must first be possible, the likelihood of success is often determined by people’s hope and determination.

I believe I can control what I do, what I say, and to some degree what I think and maybe feel. I can be optimistic that I’ll make the right choices now and in the future to accomplish my goals that can be accomplished. I can choose to see this world as beautiful and feel awe over how far man has come.

When it comes to the reality of history, the universe, and religious doctrine, I have far less control. Unless I choose to dedicate my life to creating a singularity (E.g. way of the future 🙄), there’s not much I can do to influence whether or not God exists. If one believes in objective reality as I do, optimism is irrelevant to the absolute truth of things past and present. Truth is truth, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I’m grateful for my observation that the universe seems to follow consistent laws of nature because it allows me to feel like I have some control over what happens next. Observation of and application of these laws have done so much to create technology that to me has felt like magic. I’m grateful to not feel superstitious. I find comfort in my belief that there’s no such thing as devils, demons, evil spirits, witches, curses, etc.  I’m grateful that if I stop existing after this life, that I won’t realize it to mourn for it.

My main point is that I don’t need to engineer my beliefs in order to be happy. I do not choose what to believe based on what I think will make me happy. I search for the positive aspects of what I happen to believe. I think that if I search for it, I can find a lot of beauty in whatever the circumstances may be. That search is what I call optimism.