You need to stop defining "optimism" as "naïveté." It's not. Optimism does not mean "a foolhardy lack of preparation" it means "a positive outlook." Painting optimists as people that "throw their hands up in the air" and go "WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED!' is fucking offensive. Just so you know - I had about 500 words typed out in response to you. Then I tried to click on the parent in chrome (which I've recently switched back to) and poof gone. And then I ran some errands and came back, got my coffee, sat down to start over but instead decided fuck it. Wanna know why? We're enabling you. Here we are, concerned and sincere, offering up a dozen thoughtful opinions and anecdotes, all so you can bat them down. Because you're a special little flower. Your depression is something new under the sun (it always is). Your struggles are somehow different from everyone else's (they always are). Your funk deserves to be indulged, fed, wallowed in because unlike everyone else on the planet that has ever dealt with depression, you've somehow earned yours. By the time you were born I'd been depressed for seven years. I'd be depressed for two more. But that's nothing. I've got a friend who has battled clinical depression for longer than you've been alive. I've been dealing with my parents' depression for almost as long as your parents have been alive. We've all earned our depression but until we're ready to piss it away all we're doing is hoarding grief. I said last night that depression is a wall - you either build it up or take it down brick by brick. Build it up, and you can say "look at this marvelous wall I have built to separate myself from the world! Look at all the effort it took!" Take it down and you can say "holy shit I can't believe I had to spend that much effort just so I can see the neighbor's yard." But you can also say "howdy, neighbor!" I'm not interested in making arguments against your straw man so that you can feel self-righteous in your dudgeon. I have better shit to do with my time. Know I'm not saying this to you - I'm saying this to your depression, which is clearly driving the bus at the moment. But hey - right there, is the point. An optimist? He'll get my counsel. He's interested in finding solutions. A pessimist? He's interested in proving there's no solutions and fuck that guy. I'm in the problem solving business and if you're not, get the fuck out of my way. We're here and we're ready to help. But I, for one, am not the least bit interested in holding up a punching bag so you can rail against enemies you don't have. And again - this is the depression, it isn't you. But I'm only human and if my choice is spending time on someone who wants to spend time with me or spending time with someone spoiling for a fight, the pugilist is shit outta luck.
So the dictionary keeps telling me. Emphasis on 'at the moment.' This week is the low corresponding to the huge high I was riding last week, the feeling of 'Holy shit I might have just secured a meaningful and profitable career path.' Up until last week I'd kept a lid on the worse stuff pretty well for over 6-7 months. I expect the next 'streak' to be longer, once I figure out how to stop getting overjoyed about things that haven't happened yet, which is what kicked this funk off. Hyperbole for the purposes of illustration, though I'm sincerely sorry for any personal offense taken, not just to you, to anybody who read that and is upset with me. I worry too much about definitions. I like neat boxes and flowcharts and clearly outlined expectations. Real life doesn't seem to give two shits. My grades used to be shitty because I'd get overwhelmed trying to plan out each little aspect months in advance, which contributed to just not going to class. Now I plot out important due dates/exam dates and accept a little chaos in the rest. And my grades have literally never been better in my entire life. I take philosophy very seriously, and I'd like to have my personal philosophy mostly figured out before my brain finishes forming, because I understand that deep change is much more difficult past a certain point. Know this, I'm very sincere in wishing I didn't think this way. The brain is an organ that produces thoughts like the pancreas produce insulin, like the gallbladder makes bile. Mine happens to have a malfunction somewhere, so I should be mindful of what I put into it. But if I only consume information that's good for my mental health, I'm not a well rounded person. To use an example that leaves a bitter taste in everyone's mouths, I sure as hell wish I didn't have to think about the shitshow that is going to be the 2016 presidential election, all of it's godawful candidates, the prospect of either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton as president, and the fact I can't really affect the outcome anyway. But a well rounded and informed citizen has to learn about these things. How does a reasonable person who knows they have an imbalance determine how much of that kind of poison to let into their life?Optimism does not mean "a foolhardy lack of preparation" it means "a positive outlook."
I'm saying this to your depression, which is clearly driving the bus at the moment
Painting optimists as people that "throw their hands up in the air" and go "WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED!' is fucking offensive.
Yeah, I'm sorry, too. It's just tough. My family commits suicide a lot. They also spend a remarkable amount of time in mental institutions. It teaches you that past a certain point, all you're doing is watching the show. A word of caution: mental health is very much organic... but the body is a system. It will adapt to the environment. When the environment rewards depression, the body will acclimatize to depression. Beyond a certain point there's fuckall you can do about biochemistry but up to a point, you're as depressed as you wanna be. I don't know where that point is but I know that you derive no benefit from indulging it and the potential benefit of denying it is killing the fucking problem. I got depressed in fifth grade. I stayed that way until I left New Mexico. Talking wake up, go to school, talk to no one, eat nothing, sleep three hours, gorge, sleep two hours, run nine miles, work out for an hour, sleep. Yay exercise bulimia - I rode that train from Iran-Contra clear to the Serbian conflict. But then I got out, and then I wasn't somewhere shitty, and I was surrounded by people who kind of cared about me, and for about three years I'd get choked up sometimes and start bawling on the fucking highway 'cuz I couldn't believe I'd actually MADE IT OUT. Sometimes it isn't organic. Sometimes it's environmental. Usually it's a blend of everything and that's why you need the will to change the things you can change and the strength to suffer the things you can't. Fuck optimism. Fuck pessimism. Learn pragmatism and apply it every fuckin' day to every fuckin' thing you do. Experience. I haven't had a drink in a week because I'm coughing up a lung over here. If I felt better I'd have some bourbon. When you've got emphysema, go for the brownies, not the pipe.How does a reasonable person who knows they have an imbalance determine how much of that kind of poison to let into their life?
One must choose a balance between focus and perspective. News is never perspective. When one is constantly attuned to what is going on NOW one cannot evaluate "now" in terms of "always." GK Chesterton Read Robert Kaplan's The Revenge of Geography and ask again.The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living. Without some such contrast or comparison, without some such shifting of the point of view, we should see nothing whatever of our own social surroundings. We should take them for granted, as the only possible social surroundings. We should be as unconscious of them as we are, for the most part, of the hair growing on our heads or the air passing through our lungs. It is the variety of the human story that brings out sharply the last turn that the road has taken, and it is the view under the arch of the gateway which tells us that we are entering a town.