Optimist

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Sue Vincent
turtle on his back thinks he's flying

My thanks to Melinda for introducing me to the turtle 🙂

Are you up to your eyeballs in thick, sticky mud

Or a full-monty face pack that’s doing you good?

Are you beating your head on the wall till you’re blue?

If you beat hard enough then you might just break through.

*

Or so deep underwater your chances are slim

Till you find that the deep-end’s the best place to swim?

Or way up the proverbial creek in a boat

Finding if you can’t paddle, it’s pleasant to float.

*

It could all go wrong or it might just go right…

Are you flat on your back… or about to take flight?

With a tweak in perspective, you could go so far…

With your feet in the air you could walk on a star!

About Sue Vincent

Sue Vincent was a Yorkshire born writer, esoteric teacher and a Director of The Silent Eye. She was immersed in the Mysteries all her life. Sue maintained a popular blog and is co-author of The Mystical Hexagram with Dr G.M.Vasey. Sue lived in Buckinghamshire, having been stranded there due to an accident with a blindfold, a pin and a map. She had a lasting love-affair with the landscape of Albion, the hidden country of the heart. Sue  passed into spirit at the end of March 2021.
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45 Responses to Optimist

  1. Miriam says:
    April 6, 2016 at 07:55

    Very nicely penned Sue,
    obviously today you’re not feeling blue.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  2. janmalique says:
    April 6, 2016 at 08:11

    Quite positive, I might have a lie down and look at the stars.

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  3. George omondi, Kenya says:
    April 6, 2016 at 08:27

    For sure optimism is the best way to see life

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    • Sue Vincent says:
      April 6, 2016 at 08:40

      I think so 🙂

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      • George omondi, Kenya says:
        April 6, 2016 at 09:04

        Why do you think so ?

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        • Sue Vincent says:
          April 6, 2016 at 09:24

          Because pessimism leaves no room for hope… And that is a necessity.

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          • George omondi, Kenya says:
            April 6, 2016 at 09:26

            I think you have the best idea so far

            Liked by 1 person

            Reply
          • George omondi, Kenya says:
            April 6, 2016 at 11:41

            As i know and understand that Two things define your personality:
            The way you manage things when you have nothing
            And the way you behave when you have everything. Those things are enough to define who you really are….

            My lifetime has been full of sorrows since childhood.This is because my parents died at an early stage, when i was very tiny. only to to be taken care off at the orphanage. However, i felt very despised by some of my classmates at the school, whenever they talked about their parents each and every time,which made me to shy away and move far away from such story telling. just because i would remember the pre-existed parents who had decayed before i knew how to write and read.

            my two younger siblings also died and now just left alone as the only guy who owns the family`s name. sometime i ask God a lot of question why this happen but no answer to be heard anywhere. The remaining relatives are also snooty and has grabbed all of my family properties. This makes me to think of going back to the street to stay with my fellow orphans in Kenya.The orphanage only supported me up to form four level which made me to attain grade C (plain) at the national exams. I cant continue with my studies due to lack of fees and support from my relatives. This has made me to lose hope in life as others do have.

            Nor words nor statistics can adequately capture the human tragedy of children grieving for the dying or dead parents, stigmatized by society through association with HIV/AIDS plunged into economic crisis and insecurity by their parent`s death and struggling services or support systems in impoverished communities.In my life, i would like to be a Medical Laboratory Technologist which also fully depend on the financial adequacy to take the course. i have always thought of getting someone who would volunteer in supporting me financially interns of education to achieve what i had planned to be in my life.

            And by your blog, yo have made to be optimistic in my daily life.I hope to finished my studies through the favor of God since you have opened my eyes.

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          • George omondi, Kenya says:
            May 23, 2016 at 11:33

            “For reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell,” historian Deirdre N. McCloskey told the New York Times this week.

            It’s hard to argue.

            Despite the record of things getting better for most people most of the time, pessimism isn’t just more common than optimism, it also sounds smarter. The pessimist is intellectually captivating, garnering far more attention than the optimist, who is often viewed as a naive sucker.

            It’s always been this way. John Stuart Mill wrote 150 years ago: “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” Matt Ridley wrote in his book The Rational Optimist:

            If you say the world has been getting better you may get away with being called naïve and insensitive. If you say the world is going to go on getting better, you are considered embarrassingly mad. If, on the other hand, you say catastrophe is imminent, you may expect a McArthur genius award or even the Nobel Peace Prize.

            In investing, a bull sounds like a reckless cheerleader, while a bear sounds like a sharp mind who has dug past the headlines – despite the record of the S&P 500 rising 18,000-fold over the last century. Yes, 18,000 times over! Wharton Professor Jeremy Siegel is often chided as a perma-stock-bull, blindly cheering for a higher market every time he goes on TV. But he’s done it since the early 1980s, a period in which the market increased in value 40 times over.

            And so, we delight in movies like The Big Short and carp about the collapse of Enron. And that’s great. They’re extremely instructive. But we make a mistake by over-emphasizing them. . . rather than obsessing over medical breakthroughs, the enduring success of companies like Starbucks or Amazon.com, the exciting prospects for self-driving cars, et cetera.

            This problem goes beyond investing.

            Harvard professor Teresa Amabile shows that those publishing negative book reviews are seen as smarter and more competent than those giving positive reviews of the same book. “Only pessimism sounds profound. Optimism sounds superficial,” she wrote.

            Why?

            There’s clearly more at stake with pessimism. Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for showing that people respond more strongly to loss than gain. It’s an evolutionary shield: “Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce,” Kahneman once wrote.

            Here are two other reasons that pessimism gets so much attention.

            1. Optimism appears oblivious to risks, so by default pessimism looks more intelligent. But that’s a wrong way to view optimists. Most optimists will tell you things will get ugly, that we will have recessions, bear markets, wars, panics, and pandemics. But they remain optimistic because they know that, like the universe, healthy markets grow. To the pessimist a bad event is the end of the story. To the optimist it’s a slow chapter in an otherwise excellent book.

            2. Pessimism requires action, whereas optimism means staying the course. Pessimism is “SELL, GET OUT, RUN,” which grabs your attention because it’s an action you need to take right now. Optimism is mostly, “Don’t worry, stay the course, we’ll be alright,” which is easy to ignore since it doesn’t require doing anything. Remember, it is enduring optimism that has earned a return of 18,000X over the last century. The opposite approach has failed, terribly.

            Should you ever listen to pessimists? Of course. They’re the best indication of what’s unsustainable, and thus the catalyst for what must change. They lay down the breadcrumbs on pathways for entrepreneurs to run their innovative mind.

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            • Sue Vincent says:
              May 23, 2016 at 16:05

              A post in itself, George. I particularly like the phrase, ‘To the optimist it’s a slow chapter in an otherwise excellent book’ and, no matter what it makes me look like to others, take the optimists stance that we WILL learn and grow… whether we like it or not 🙂

              Liked by 1 person

              Reply
  5. jenanita01 says:
    April 6, 2016 at 09:18

    Sue, I think you have enough optimism for several people… wish I knew your secret…

    Like

    Reply
  6. Ritu says:
    April 6, 2016 at 09:51

    Brilliant words! I like a bit of positivity!

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  8. D. Wallace Peach says:
    April 6, 2016 at 14:03

    What a nice read first thing in the morning. I have a cold too, so I’ll be an optimist and enjoy the luxury of spending the day in bed writing 🙂

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  9. BunKaryudo says:
    April 6, 2016 at 14:08

    It’s good to be optimistic. I never worry if things go pear shaped. I like pears.

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  10. macjam47 says:
    April 6, 2016 at 15:58

    Beautiful post, so full of promise.

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  11. noelleg44 says:
    April 6, 2016 at 16:46

    I loved this – sent it on to a friend!

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  12. Eliza Waters says:
    April 6, 2016 at 22:31

    Great little ditty – it should be put to music!

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  13. aranislandgirl says:
    April 7, 2016 at 01:39

    Cute, clever, and absolute truth Sue.

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  14. dgkaye says:
    April 9, 2016 at 17:55

    Thanks for the dose of optimism Sue. 🙂 xo

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