Optimism - Take 2

For the writers and the dreamers.

For all of us.

The Atlantic recently included an article called “Be Like Sisyphus,” written by Gal Beckerman.*

I was a student of Classics (M.A. 1989 University of Washington, thank you very much), and I was intrigued by the idea that anyone would ever exhort us to emulate the miserable character who, in Greek mythology, was doomed to roll an immense boulder up a hill, whereupon the boulder would roll back down again.

Forever and ever.

As Wikipedia notes, “tasks that are both laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean.” **

The article purports to be about “hopeful pessimism,” which surely sounds like an oxymoron. Hear me out (or rather, hear Gal Beckerman out).

Beckerman shares this quote by Mara van der Lugt: ***

“’If hope can’t emerge from any concrete belief that you will actually achieve your hoped-for outcomes, then what can sustain it? Values . . . The simplest way to put this is to ask yourself whether the cause or the change you are fighting for would still feel worth fighting for if you knew you’d never see it realized. [This kind of hope is] . . . driven by principles such as justice, duty, solidarity with your fellow human, and  . . . your sense of goodness. You act because you feel you must.’”

[Hopeful pessimism is] . . . driven by principles such as justice, duty, solidarity with your fellow human, and  . . . your sense of goodness. You act because you feel you must.

Beckerman goes on to say:

 “Václav Havel, the Czech dissident who would become the president of his country . . . [says of hope] that it is not a ‘prognostication’ but rather ‘an orientation of the spirit’: Hope is ‘not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.’”

For February I will share a full newsletter - complete with Two Over Easy All Day Long news and upcoming promotional campaigns, and reviews of a couple of lovely books I’ve read.

For now, I wish you strength and perseverance and a dose of hopeful pessimism for every good and just Sisyphean task you face, and leave you with a simple reiteration of Havel’s words:

Hope is . . . an ability to work for something because it is good.

(And this - I leave you with a photo of a sweet encounter
with a burro on the beach.
Because donkeys make me feel hopeful.
Always.)

*Beckerman, Gal, Be Like Sisyphus, The Atlantic, 1/22/2025 (available online at https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2025/01/case-for-sisyphus-and-hopeful-pessimism/681356/)(last accessed on 1/23/2025)

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

*** Mara van der Lugt, author of Hopeful Pessimism (Princeton University Press 2025), and professor of philosophy at the University of St. Andrews.

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)