Mind the gap. Wednesday February 15, 2012

What's the point of pessimism?

One might imagine that it's the optimists who will inherit the earth, leaving the pessimists to wallow in their general lack of hope and expectation.

After all, who'd want their glass half empty rather than half full?

Well. Let's just stop and think about this for a second.

Imagine that you and I were standing on one side of a chasm. At its foot lurks piranha-infested water, and it's - ooh - nine metres wide, a little over 29 feet 6 inches.

Your task? To jump to the other side.

As an eternal optimist you might declare 'no problem'. 'Go for it.'

This, however, would be foolish. In the extreme.

The world record for the men's long jump currently stands at 8.95 metres (7.52 for the women's) so even an Olympic athlete would end up as fish food.

The point about the confirmed pessimist is that he or she would probably shy away from the jump even if the gap was less than a metre.

But somewhere between these two extremes sits sensible behaviour, which I think we'd probably call being realistic.

I'm not sure about you, but on a bad day I can find myself taking a very downcast view of the world, and I may long to be the complete opposite, a total optimist.

Better, surely, to recognise that it's being realistic about things which actually gives us the best hope of happiness.

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