It's time for optimism

I have used this expression on several occasions in the past, but never consciously worked with the thought that this could apply to “Buying” as well. Whether it’s buying a loaf of bread, booking a vacation or going to the nursery for a potted plant for your home, you’re buying for the future use of your purchase. You’re buying because you feel optimistic about using, consuming or enjoying the purchase. Sure, the loaf of bread may be a necessity to prevent you from starving, but then you could have sufficed with buying a sandwich instead of a full loaf. Every purchase is an Act of Optimism.

Philosophically this would translate into a pessimistic life scenario where you eat in restaurants, wear only the clothes on your back and sleep in a hotel room (or park bench), consuming exactly your daily needs and leaving a very small carbon footprint.

Well human nature is not like that. Human needs are more inquisitive and therefore inherently optimistic. We learn because we’re optimistic, we buy because we’re optimistic, we believe because we’re optimistic and we forgive because we’re optimistic. If you can handle the truth, we even love because we’re optimistic.

A 16-year-old Australian girl sets out on a 34ft sailboat last weekend to conquer the oceans in a trip around the world. She bets her life on being able and capable to do this, while too many of us are caught up in a recessive depression that have numbed the minds to gloom and doom. I said it before, “Life is for learning and learning is an act of optimism.”

Too many of us have been whining about being cheated by our government, wall street, the bank or the social security system for far too long now. It’s time to get off the pot and do something about it, because in our human essence we are all optimists and we’re wasting precious time of our lives being downtrodden.

I don’t care any longer if our Secretary of the Treasury allows million dollar bonuses to his Wall Street buddies and then hires them as advisors. I don’t care any longer that Helicopter Ben has a total grip on the demise of the US dollar. For all the time that I cared, nothing really changed, because the process of change is controlled by a force, we the people, put in a position of absolute power. I’m tired of listening to blas√© explanations of nitwit anchors and reporters without a clue. I’m tired of explanations, period.

Any explanation wears the perfume of the person explaining. I may or may not like the scent, but the fact remains that whatever the explanation reveals, I do have a choice to take action based on the circumstances of my life. And in the midst of all this turmoil of depression, recession, doom and gloom, green shoots, recovery signs and wariness, I started reading a book that was published 84 years ago, 4 years short of the great depression.

It’s titled Florida by Kenneth L. Roberts and it is a fascinating eyewitness report on the year 1925, the Year the Great Florida Rush Happened. I would like you to share some interesting paragraphs with you that can serve as a lesson in the obvious, just in case you, like myself, got carried away for a while in the gloom and doom of self inflicted economic, political and financial scenarios. Just keep your eyes on the ball.

The next hour, tomorrow, next week or next year; it’s all about future. In order to believe in the future, we have to be optimists.

The following was reported 84 years ago, but look at the similarities:

-A great deal of violent mental activity is devoted, in this period of super-enlightenment and ultra-civilization, to thinking up difficult explanations for simple matters. When stocks on the New York Stock Exchange decline or rise, countless experts rush into print for the purpose of telling the credulous public that the decline was caused by: (A) the speech of the Foreign Minister Vlnka of Ptomenia on the caviar shortage, (B) the installation of new plumbing in the White House, (C) the drought in Georgia, (D) the coal situation, (E) the oil situation, (F) the political situation and (G) the general situation. The real explanation of the decline lies in the fact that nobody wanted to buy the stocks at a higher price. -

And the next paragraph continues by stating:

- The same passion for explanation is applied to the peculiar dance steps affected by the younger generation, the use of the word “buddy” among the enlisted personnel of the late American Army, the excessive stupidity of politicians who insist on proposing private tax reduction schemes, the increase in cigarette smoking among matrons, the defeat of all prominent football teams and every other subject capable of arousing interest in the minds of more than five persons. -

Admit it. In 2009 we are still trying to explain every single occurrence that is already obvious to most. We are confronted with panels of experts, trying to explain the good, bad and ugly of “The Balloon Kid Hoax” as if it were not enough to wake up more copy catters and publicity whores with similar pranks up their sleeves. Experts are lurking around every corner, paraphrasing battle cries and explanations, not even asking if we’re interested in their stories that very much reek like self serving prophecies. Who needs it?

Winston Churchill said, “For myself I am an Optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else” and Susan Bissonette stated that “An Optimist is the Human Personification of Spring”.

I’m not propagating to let any of the culprits and thieves who put all of us in this situation go free. I’m just saying it’s time to let the optimist come out and see daylight again, because apparently we’re ruled by different forces than Wall Street or Washington DC, as I found out reading this 84 year old publication.

Learning is an act of optimism alright. Forgetting what we’ve learned may be its pessimist counterpart or else it’s God’s way to teach us the gentle side of amnesia.

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