Optimism

Rhett reminding me that a world where belly rubs and bacon-flavored treats exist, there is always reason for hope . . .

I am a hopeless optimist.

I know, the bit on this website says I’m a possibilist, and that is, in fact, my word.

Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

There’s an interesting history behind the word possibilist. According to the Wikipedia entry about Dr. Hans Rosling:

In his posthumous book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think he wrote, “People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. I'm a very serious ‘possibilist.’  . . . It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful. (Emphasis mine)

Hope for further progress, and a constructive and useful worldview. Who wouldn’t want that?

So I aspire to be a possibilist, but in my clearest moments I admit to optimism, to believing the best may come, in spite of any evidence to the contrary.

Which is why I love celebrations of the solstice and the new year: light in darkness, celebrations in spite of sometimes grim reality, hope for the future. And most of all, a belief, however irrational, that love will prevail, that all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Book Review

It’s a place where good things happen.

In anticipation of reading Somewhere Beyond the Sea, I am taking a moment to savor the first book in the series, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (Tor Books 2020). If you haven’t read this book, described as Harry Potter for adults, I strongly encourage (admonish, commend, suggest, urge, advocate, tout, and put in my two cents) you to run right out and buy it or borrow from your library. Or—fine—scroll to the appropriate page and purchase it online, if you must.

What’s it about, you ask?

A tired and dreary case manager living a tired and dreary life, beset on all sides by unpleasant people, his only friend an even more unpleasant cat, is suddenly cast ashore (almost literally) on an island paradise. He has been sent by Extremely Upper Management to shut down the island’s orphanage, which houses children with magical abilities who are considered second class citizens at best, and at worst dangerous creatures who must be quarantined from the rest of civilized society.

But here, at the orphanage, these children are allowed to be themselves, and loved because of, not in spite of, who they are.

Like I said: it’s a place where good things happen.

There is a bearded garden she-gnome, and a devil’s son. There is a boy who turns into a dog. There is a charming sea slug. There is unexpected romance in an otherwise romance-less life. And there is joy and kindness and friendship and laughter. In a world peopled by petty bureaucrats and bigots, the house in the cerulean sea is a place where love exists, in spite of everything.

Telling more would require an extreme Spoiler Alert, and I won’t do it. 

Here are a few of my favorite quotes, to whet your appetite.

 _______________________________________________

Mr. Parnassus arched an eyebrow. “The world is a weird and wonderful place. Why must we try and explain it all away?” 

#

He began to cackle.

Mr. Parnassus sighed . . .  “Did you just tell that entire story to be able to make a joke?”

“Yes,” Lucy said, wiping his eyes. “Because you told me once that if we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’re doing it wrong. Am I doing it wrong? Nobody seems to be laughing.”

“Humor is subjective, I’m afraid,” Mr. Parnassus said.

“That’s unfortunate,” Lucy said . . . . “Humanity is so weird. If we’re not laughing, we’re crying or running for our lives because monsters are trying to eat us. And they don’t even have to be real monsters. They could be the ones we make up in our heads. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“I suppose. But I’d rather be that way than the alternative.”

“Which is?”

“Not feeling anything at all.”

# 

“It would be better if there were actual treasure,” Lucy muttered.

“And what if the treasure was the friendships we solidified along the way?” Arthur asked.

Lucy pulled a face. “That’s the worst treasure in the world. They already were my friends. I want rubies.”

 _____________________________________

Consider your appetite whetted - if you want more, you'll need to read The House in the Cerulean Sea!

One last quote from
TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea,
to bring it back to optimism:

No, it wasn’t very fair at all.

“It’s not,” Mr. Parnassus said,
agreeing with the unspoken words.
“But I allow him to dream of such things because he’s a child, and who knows what the future will bring?
Change often starts with the smallest of whispers.
Like-minded people building it up to a roar.”

Join me in whispering and roaring of a world
where all children are loved and safe and cared for,
where each of us can be our best selves,
where we all focus on being kind to each other
and to the earth we share.

Postscript 1: As you surely know by now, I love words, and “hopeless optimist” is a delightful oxymoron!

Postscript 2: To be clear, I am not talking about Good-Ship-Lollipop feelings (or, if you’re a bluegrass fan, Big-Rock-Candy-Mountain fantasies). On any given day there will be pain and sadness - sometimes unimaginable pain and sadness, more for some who are on the receiving end of institutional and/or societal oppression. And there will be moments of gladness, for all of us. Optimism, for me, is the belief that we can fill our cups with the latter, while fighting to reduce the former in any way available to us.

Image of the earth in family hands by the oh-so-perfectly named Sunny Studios (text added)