Life on earth is too short to spend it with negative events, places and even negative people. Many of us work hard at maintaining an optimistic view of life; it is very much like maintaining oneself physically and spiritually. We have to nourish all three in order to maintain a healthy being. We feed optimism by surrounding ourselves as much as possible with positive people and events in our environment. Mary Lou Retton said, “Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.” Even as an elderly person, I remem- ber, a song from my youth that I heard while watching one of the first animated movies in the early 1940s. It went something like this: “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch onto the affirmative and don’t mess with Mr. Inbetween.” It was a very catchy tune, and I remember singing or humming it (when I was alone) over and over again. When I was old enough to understand what it was really saying, it had a positive effect on me and the way I viewed things.
One could argue that there are a lot of things in life to be pessimistic about, because bad things happen to each and every one of us. The public media has a tendency to report a preponderance of negative events and very little on the positive side. Every day many good things happen in our society that are uplifting and that would feed our optimism if we could be informed of them. But the various news media sources seem to feel the listening public prefer to hear the bad. If we allow our attitudes to be directed only by what we hear from the media or from negative people, it is bound to affect us in a negative way. Pessimists are born every day just by listening to the media. We have to temper what we hear by thinking about all the good and positive things around us. There is a scripture that says: “Many are called but few are chosen.” Chosen by who? I have always interpreted that to mean we are the ones who choose because we have agency. We choose how we view the news and how we view our environment. We also choose how we behave in relation to that view. About two thousand years ago, Marcus Aurelius said, “If you are distressed by anything internal, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to the view you have of that thing. How you view anything is a power you can revoke at any moment.” Aurelius used the term “revoke.” I would prefer to use the term “invoke.” We have the power to invoke our will on every and all circumstances. There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic, and research has shown that optimistic people are happier, healthier and more productive than are pessimists. Helen Keller stated that “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” That alone should be incentive enough to start feeding our optimistic bones every day while accentuating the positive.
Gordon B. Hinckley stated that we should “Cultivate a spirit of optimism. Walk with faith, rejoicing in the beauties of nature, in the goodness of those you love, in the testimony which you carry in your heart concerning things divine.”
I have often thought of the word optimism, and it is the kind of word that you want to hear every day just to remind us to be that way. Optimism, Optimism, Optimism. I remember reading from the Old Testament where the Israelites were instructed to wear reminders—reminders of the law and other commandments they were given of the Lord. One such reminder was worn hanging in front of their eyes so they were constantly reminded of what was expected of them. No! I’m not suggesting that we wear something in front of our eyes with the word optimistic on it. But we need to think optimistically, and sooner than later the word and its meaning will become a part of our daily thinking process and eventually part of our life without having to have reminders around us.