Ok, so none other than Time magazine has made acceptable what every Jewish mother knows: Those with mild depression have the best estimate of future events. The overly optimistic are usually wrong, and the chronically depressed see only the darkness.
But all you need to do is know there’s danger lurking out there, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of how things will pan out…
And yet we’re (at least some of us) are optimists…How is it that against all evidence to the contrary, people think things are going to get better…Samuel Johnson, who wrote several centuries ago noted that the greatest testament to the victory of optimism over experience is the inclination of divorced people to remarry!
Well, it turns out we’re hard wired to be optimistic. Imagine if our forbearers had truly considered what was going on outside their caves: they never would have gone anywhere! And though many of them got eaten, some managed to end up on brighter shores…And believe it or not, you are the progeny of a pair of optimists!
So in the words of Samuel Beckett:
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Tags: Beckett, depression, Jewish mother, optimism, Samuel Johnson
