Torrey Braman

Intro to Philosophy
March 31, 2011
Dr. Mehring

Reaction Paper # 8: Philosophical Optimist or Pessimist?

To me, the perfect way to live ones life is not that of complete optimism, nor of
complete pessimism. Ideally to be happiest and live a comfortable life you should focus
on combining the two. Now, for the sake of the argument the most important to me is
optimism; it’s good to have hopes and strive to accomplish goals. However, without a bit
of a pessimistic attitude those very same goals and hopes can easily tear you down, most
likely resulting in complete pessimism and loss of hope.

As I said previously, optimism is a very powerful attitude to have. It’s what will
get us out of bed in the morning, ready to explore and conquer new life struggles and
events. With it, we provide ourselves with goals and a potent dose of accomplishment. Of
all our emotions, feeling accomplished is the head of so many other positive emotions
below it. Accomplishment is one of few emotions within ourselves that powers that
special “force… [that] life creates [and] makes [us] grow. Its energy surrounds us and
binds us," as it is the source of energy that we may define as true happiness. As that quote
from Yoda is very true, we must not rely completely on optimism or failure shall bring us
to the dark side; we must always maintain a pessimistic attitude equal to the optimism
that powers us.

Without pessimism, we stand no chance against a very much, unexpected, slap in

the face from our failure to keep up with our rising expectations. I for one know this first
hand as I am one of many examples to this very thing. I used to try so hard in school and
give 110 percent in order to get the grade that I had been expected to get. Yes, I would,
for the most part end up with the grades in which I had optimistic expectations for.
However, that small part that was not perfect was my own personal slap in the face. I had
not wanted bad grades, therefore I didn’t even think about getting bad grades. The only
problem was that when those few bad grades came around, they completely wrecked all
my ambition and confidence that I had in myself, and this very quickly drained me almost
completely. I have come to learn however that with pessimistic thoughts come protective
barriers for failure. I can RATIONALIZE with myself that no, I won’t do good on the
test because instead, I chose to surf the web. It is not the pessimism of which brings us
down that is important, but the type that keeps us aware of our imperfect reality that can
save us.

Optimism for our ambitious climes to perfection; pessimism for those times in
which we may fall.