Is this a character speaking?
Posted By Jane on March 15, 2001
Q. Jane, is this a character speaking, or are you utterly honest? A friend of mine told me a joke yesterday: the difference between an optimist and pessimist is that the pessimist is only a well informed optimist.
- Anonymous
A. I am Jane, not a character. I am honest when I answer the questions posed to me. I admit that over time my answers may change, but that only reflects the reality that I change. As for an optimist being just a well informed pessimist, of course, a pessimist would see that as true, but only a pessimist.
Being an optimist or a pessimist is based on our feelings, not our intellect. Our feelings are not based on information; we wish they were and we often act like they are, but they’re not. Our feelings are based in ourselves and they can not be traced or understood like a list of ingredients of the cake of our life. We can give lists of intellectual reasons for our feelings and justify our emotions by backing them up with all kinds of information, that’s what humans do. In the end our behavior is propelled by our emotions and they are not governed by intellect or physics or any definitive process. This is the conflict at the core of being human. We are intellectual and emotional creatures and those two things don’t always work in harmony or agreeance, so, we have conflicting desires and understandings. An optimist has more patience than a pessimist does. A pessimist likes to prepare for disappointment by being disappointed before there is concrete evidence they should be disappointed. An optimist doesn’t believe in preparing for disappointment and can be patient and wait and not be disappointed until the actual moment of all expectations being shattered. Neither an optimist or a pessimist has enough information, that’s why they can both exist around the same situation.
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