"Within yourself lies the cause of whatever enters into life. To come into the full realization of your own awakened interior powers, is to be able to condition your life in exact accord with what you would have it." --Ralph Waldo Trine, author, approx. 1896.
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Optimists and pessimists are about as different as night and day. They are similar, however, in that each has a particular point of view that is a determining factor in their life. I have gone through most of my existence believing that it doesn't hurt to be a little pessimistic at times, providing of course that you are predominantly optimistic.
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Truth be known: You can't be a little bit pessimistic any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. Optimism and pessimism are like oil and water, never blending no matter how hard you stir. I have been wrong in trying to mix the two and I don't mind admitting it.
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I arrived at my current state of understanding by asking myself three questions. 1) Do I prefer strength or impotence? 2) Do I want peace or pain? 3) Do I aspire to success or failure? The answer in each case was obvious.
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Optimists and pessimists both build their world from within based on perception. One, I believe, creates a type of heaven while the other contributes to a certain hell. You and I have the predominating characteristics of either an optimist or a pessimist. We are making, hour by hour, our own heaven or our own hell; and in the degree that we are making one or the other we are helping make it for all of mankind. There is very definitely a domino effect. In both cases we make a contribution to the world, one positive and one negative.
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The optimist calls on wisdom and insight to maintain a positive attitude while the pessimist is questioning by nature and has a very narrow, limited view on life in general.
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The word harmony has pleasing, heavenly connotations. The old English word hell means to build a wall around, to separate; to be helled was to be shut off from. If there is such a thing as harmony in our life there must be something that we are in sync with or in close relationship to. Likewise, if there is such a thing as being helled, then there must be something from which we are held or separated.
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I always suspected that there was something holding me back for all these years and now I understand that it was ME keeping ME from being ME, aided and abetted by that little bit of pessimism that I thought was so healthy. I guess you are never too old to learn something about life -- and yourself.
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