Happiness

OPTIMISM, PESSIMISM, AND NAïVETé

She loved the rain as much as the sun. Her least thoughts had the cheery colors of lovely, hearty flowers, pleasing to the eye.

ALAIN

One morning in the monastery courtyard, I was looking at a tree that held a few red flowers and a dozen sparrows. Everything I saw produced within me a sense of jubilation and of the infinite purity of phenomena. I forced my mind into a downbeat mood and conjured up all sorts of negative feelings. Suddenly the tree looked dusty to me and the flowers sickly; the chirping of the sparrows began to irritate me. I wondered which was the right way to look at things, and came to the conclusion that the first had been the correct way because it generated an open, creative, and liberating attitude and led to greater satisfaction. Such an attitude allows us spontaneously to embrace the universe and beings and to tear away any egocentric divide between the self and the world. On the other hand, when we cling to a negative perception of phenomena, something rings false—we feel “disconnected” from the universe, which comes to seem dull, strange, distant, and sometimes hostile.

THE UNSUBSTANTIATED ACCUSATIONS AGAINST OPTIMISM

Psychologists have long believed that mildly depressive people are “realistic” in their outlook. Optimists have a tendency to dwell longer on pleasant incidents than on painful situations and to overestimate their past performance and mastery of things.

This implies that the pessimist tends to go around with his eyes wide open and to assess situations more lucidly than the optimist. “Reality may not always be a barrel of laughs, but you have to see things the way they are,” he might say, whereas the optimist is a genial but incurably naive dreamer. “Life will bring him down to earth soon enough,” we think. It so happens that this is not true. Further studies have shown that the pessimist’s objective, detached, and wary judgment is inadequate. When it’s a question of real situations drawn from daily life, the optimist’s approach is in fact more realistic and pragmatic than that of the pessimist. If, for example, a cross section of women who drink coffee are shown a report on the increased risk of breast cancer linked to caffeine, or if a cross section of sunbathers are informed that lying out in the sun increases the risk of skin cancer, a week later the optimists have better recall of the reports’ details than the pessimists and have taken them more into account in their behavior.¹ Moreover, they concentrate attentively and selectively on the risks that truly concern them, rather than fretting vainly and ineffectually over everything.² In this way, they remain more serene than the pessimists and gather their energies for real threats.

If we observe the way in which people perceive the events of their lives, appreciate the quality of the lived moment, and create their future by overcoming obstacles with an open and creative attitude, we find that the optimists have an undeniable advantage over the pessimists. Many studies show that they do better on exams, in their chosen profession, and in their relationships, live longer and in better health, enjoy a better chance of surviving postoperative shock, and are less prone to depression and suicide.³ A study was made of more than nine hundred people admitted to an American hospital in 1960. Their degree of optimism and other psychological traits were evaluated in tests and questionnaires. Forty years later, it turns out that the optimists lived 19 percent longer on average than the pessimists—some sixteen years of added life for an octogenarian.⁴ Furthermore, Martin Seligman claims that pessimists are up to eight times more likely to become depressed when things go wrong; they do worse at school, sports, and most jobs than their talent would suggest. It was demonstrated that pessimism exacerbates depression and the other difficulties cited, and not the other way around; when such people are taught specifically to overcome pessimism by changing their outlook, they are markedly less subject to depressive relapse. There are definite reasons for this. Indeed psychologists describe pessimism as an “explanatory style” for the world that engenders “learned helplessness.”⁵

TWO WAYS OF SEEING THE WORLD

An optimist is somebody who considers his problems to be temporary, controllable, and linked to a specific situation. He will say: “There’s no reason to make a fuss about it; these things don’t last. I’ll figure it out; in any case, I usually do.” The pessimist, on the other hand, thinks that his problems will last (“It’s not the sort of thing that just goes away”), that they jeopardize everything he does and are out of his control (“What do you expect me to do about it?”). He also imagines that he has some basic inner flaw, and tells people: “Whatever I do, it always turns out the same way” and concludes: “I’m just not cut out to be happy.”

The sense of insecurity that afflicts so many people today is closely tied to pessimism. The pessimist is constantly anticipating disaster and falls victim to chronic anxiety and doubt. Morose, irritable, and nervous, he has no confidence in the world or in himself and always expects to be bullied, abandoned, and ignored.

Here’s a pessimist’s parable. One fine summer’s day, a driver got a flat in the middle of the countryside. To add insult to injury, he found that he had no jack. The place was practically deserted. There was one solitary house in sight, halfway up a hill. After a few minutes’ hesitation, the traveler decided to go borrow a jack. As he climbed toward the house, he began to think, “What if the owner won’t lend me a jack? It would be pretty rotten to leave me in a fix.” As he slowly neared the house, he became more and more upset. “I would never do that to a stranger. It would be hateful!” Finally, he knocked on the front door, and when the owner opened up, he shouted: “You can keep your jack, you son of a bitch!”

The optimist, however, trusts that it is possible to achieve her goals and that with patience, resolve, and intelligence, she will ultimately do so. The fact is, more often than not, she does.

In everyday life the pessimist starts out with an attitude of refusal, even where it’s totally inappropriate. I remember a Bhutanese official I often had to deal with. Every time I asked him a question, he systematically prefaced his answers with, “No, no, no,” regardless of what he was going to say afterward, which gave our conversations a comic tone.

“Do you think we’ll be able to leave tomorrow morning?”

“No, no, no. . . . Be ready to leave at nine a.m.”

If pessimism and suffering were as immutable as fingerprints or eye color, it would be more sensitive to avoid trumpeting the benefits of happiness and optimism. But if optimism is a way of looking at life and happiness a condition that can be cultivated, one might as well get down to work without further delay. As Alain has written: “How marvelous human society would be if everyone added his own wood to the fire instead of crying over the ashes!”⁶

Even if we are born with a certain predisposition to look for the silver lining, and even if the influence of those who raise us nudges our outlook toward pessimism or optimism, our interpretation of the world can shift later on, and considerably, because our minds are flexible.

HOPE