The Privilege of Optimism
I think I'm pretty lucky to be an optimist these days about my own life. I'm lucky because having feelings of optimism is rooted deeply in having decent mental health, which through the miracles of modern pharmacology and years and years of practice I have managed to get to. Having endured long years of crushing depression earlier in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I know what it feels like to be unable to summon optimism.
There's a lot of privilege in being an optimist. Even if America falls into the racist fascism it looks headed toward, I'm going to look like all the guys on Trump's cabinet, while society's underdogs get to struggle YET AGAIN with a deck stacked against them for their gender, skin color, or sexual orientation. So, this little optimism exercise of mine is rooted in the deeply personal world of the space around me and not the beloved community which so richly deserves the same.
Had to take a break for a second and wipe away the tears writing that paragraph caused.
I know in my most important relationship, experience has shown me that following the unwritten rules of my marriage will make the old adage of happy wife, happy life come true. My jobs include answering the door 100% of the time, not getting invited to parties, never handing her the telephone, and finding something to amuse myself with while she runs her weekly marathon.
I'm optimistic about work because I'm there on a strictly voluntary basis. As a retiree with a pension, I've got an income for the rest of my life, so no employer can hold me hostage to financial need ever again. I get to work in a place I like around people I like, doing work I like with tools I like. In the era where pensions are rare and getting rarer, I know I'm in a good place by good fortune. There are plenty of people who've worked the same number of years as me, doing the same thing, who worked for organizations that didn't have a plan to help the staff retire.
Despite what I felt like was a distinct lack of natural talent as a father, all my kids survived into adulthood, regularly tell me they love me, and are fully self-supporting through their own contributions. They're doing a good job raising their own kids, and I have full faith and confidence that there are no negative surprises in store.
It's in my own body that my optimism starts to fade a bit. I'm aging more quickly than I thought I would. Things that used to be a struggle now just seem out of reach. I think about the miles I've pedaled and the mountains I've climbed, and it's hard to feel connected to the guy who did that. I feel slow and arthritic and lost physically sometimes. So, I have an opportunity to improve in that one front at least.
And then I look at the world my grandkids are going to live in, and optimism fades more and more quickly. The glaciers are melting, the polar bears are dying, and the rivers are drying up, and half the people in America want gas to be cheaper so they can burn more of it. We elected a Black man as our president, and the next thing you know, communities across the South are going back to naming their high schools after Stonewall Jackson. When the lives of so many people I know personally, men and women, were improved by a woman's right to choose, fake Christians Jesus wouldn't recognize have taken that right away from a whole generation. I am not optimistic about our future. I just can't be.
Life goes on, however. I remain committed to the struggle and to being on the side of right. I look for the happiness, earned and unearned, that comes my way. I hug my wife every day, kiss my grandkids every chance I get, and enjoy sharing joy with people when I can, even if it's just by making their laptop work a little better.
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