THE
PHILOSOPHY OF OPTIMISM
John
G. Sutton
As we enter a new year I thought how many of us will be
thinking ‘here we go again’. Perhaps looking ahead to the next twelve months
with a gloomy sense of pessimism as if we expect nothing good to happen.
We each have our burden to bear in this life, some more than others, but
surely we owe it to ourselves to positively affirm our existence by personal
effort. It is easy not to try, to look on our misfortunes as a kind of
inevitable curse from which we are doomed never to escape.
So adopting a negative attitude we accept failure and as Christina
Rossetti observed, wonder ‘Does the road wind uphill all the way? Right to the
very end?’ Thus turning our lives into a daily grind as we endure the struggle
instead of enjoying the challenge.
Life should not be just drudgery and toil. We are, each
one of us, an individual miracle. Why then do so many of us allow ourselves to
be disheartened when faced with what are really minor difficulties compared to
the odds against our being born in the first place? The answer to that question
has been sought by numerous philosophers over the centuries with many seeming to
see the human condition as one of pointless desolation.
Consider what Aristotle (384-322 BC) the Greek philosopher said ‘It is
better not to have been born, and death is better than life’.
Then we have John Paul Sartre (1905-80) stating almost that life is
meaningless and ‘man is a useless passion’…’hell is other people’.
Sartre’s hopeless existentialism offers this thought to mankind:
‘Human life begins on the far side of despair’.
Arguing against the pessimistic philosophy of Sartre and
his school of existentialist doom and gloom is Colin Wilson and his philosophy
of optimism. Wilson, who first
found literary fame in 1956 with his international best-selling book ‘The
Outsider’, offers a far more hopeful antidote to Sarte’s despair. Wilson
proposes that there should be a philosophy of optimism that is based on the
teachings of the psychologist Abraham Maslow.
Whilst practicing as a psychologist in the USA Maslow arrived at a unique
conclusion. He realized that all the patients he was seeing were suffering from
some form of malaise be that depression, anxiety, paranoia or whatever. He, as
the psychologist, was attempting to bring them back to normality. Then he asked
himself the question why was it that many people were not depressed, paranoid
etc. What was it about these people that stopped them suffering from anxiety
etc. So Maslow began to study ‘normal’ people in an attempt to find why this
was so.
One thing that Maslow noted about individuals who were coping with life was that they reported enjoying moments of delight. That is they had periods of enhanced perception, peak experiences that made them feel good about themselves and the world in general. Such experiences encouraged them to be optimistic. Those that were not coping, the clinically depressed, did not report such moments and were morbidly pessimistic.
We may imagine that it is difficult to achieve a peak
experience, when we perceive that we have just received absurd good news and the
world is wonderful place. Wilson argues that it is not as problematical as we
may think. Citing the writer Mark Twain, Wilson gives an example of the
character Tom Sawyer who is required to paint a fence. Now painting a wooden
fence is, one would think, a rather mundane task and hardly likely to bring any
form of inspirational insight. But Mark Twain has Sawyer undertake this task
with great enthusiasm, whistling whilst he vigorously paints making the job seem
so much fun that people passing ask for a go with the brush. Some pay Tom Sawyer
to let them enjoy the experience of painting that fence and give him strange
things that any boy would love, such as a dead cat, a ball of string, a penknife
etc. The point that Mark Twain is making and Wilson is explaining, is that most
situations in life can be turned into wonderfully rewarding experiences if we apply ourselves to
them in a meaningful manner. Tom Sawyer made it appear that painting a fence
made him happy, he did this by adopting a carefree attitude and displaying this
to the world by whistling a jolly tune. By so doing he became happy, turning a
mundane task into a peak experience.
The argument that Wilson is putting forward to support
his philosophy of optimism is relatively simple. If we adopt a positive frame of
mind and pay attention to the detail of the daily duties, tasks and personal
interactions that constitute our days, then we will alter our perception. Most
of us do not do that, pay attention that is. We allow our lives to run on
automatic pilot, missing 90% of the detail seeing only the outline of the life
we are supposed to be living. By concentrating on each task, each conversation,
each moment in fact we become aware and by so doing enjoy even the most boring
of duties.
As an example from my own life, I recently decided to
valet my car. This is hardly an intellectual exercise and I imagined it would be
extremely dull, but I set about the job enthusiastically. I bought chrome
cleaner for the wire wheels, special wax for the body, Canadian bees-wax for the
leather seats and all manner of dusters to polish the paintwork. Then, one fine
morning, I went out and started work. I washed the car down with light shampoo,
hosed it off and buffed it dry. Then applied the Simoniz Wax and polished the
bonnet etc. It was as I was applying the chrome cleaner to the wire wheels that
I noticed someone was standing behind me watching. ‘What an amazing car’ the
elderly gentleman said ‘I used to have one of these in the sixties, can I sit
inside?’ Having done so the man
told me how much fun he and his wife had all those years ago driving round in
their own car. We passed a happy half hour exchanging anecdotes and then he had
to go. As I stood watching him walk away I thought for a moment what a happy
morning I had just enjoyed and all because I had undertaken a mundane task with
optimistic enthusiasm.
Might I be so bold as to suggest that we each make a
resolution to adopt Wilson’s optimistic and positive approach to our lives in
the New Year. We do owe it to
ourselves to pay attention to what we do with our limited time. If we put in 100% effort to even the most seemingly boring of
tasks we will enjoy life so much more. So
the next time you paint a fence, clean your car or undertake any duty do so
enthusiastically and you may be amazed at how much joy you get from the
experience. One thing is for certain, adopt the philosophy of optimism and you
will never be depressed again, you won’t have time!
I am John G. Sutton and you can read more of my work on the world wide web at Psychicworld.net You can read the book: Colin Wilson: Philosopher of Optimism by Brad Spurgeon published by Michael Butterworth ISBN 0-9552672-0-X available at bookstores or your local library.