I am a pessimist in day-to-day life. I am not surprised when I
find that we are out of bread at lunch time, out of diapers when I don't have
the car, that the jelly side always hits the floor.
But I am a fierce optimist when it comes to the bigger things. For
so long now, life has continued on a downward spiral for my family, but every
year, I find myself not just hoping
but believing that things. will. get.
better.
It's gotten to be funny—to me, if no one else. I grew up quite poor
and determined not to be that way again. My brother thought college was
ridiculous; my sister got tired of it and graduated with a general studies
degree, which she followed up randomly with sociology. I knew better. I got a
real degree from a real school, and while I dreamed of things like writing,
art, and architecture, I followed my real degree up with something practical: a
master's in teaching. My sister and brother are both doing better than I am.
In college, my husband and I knew all sorts of people: art majors,
drug addicts, homeless men, and mentally ill women. They've all made better
lives for themselves than we've managed.
Since then, we've seen people make terrible mistakes: marriages
that didn't work, careers that didn't work, lifestyles that didn't work. They've
all picked up the pieces and gone on to be more successful than we've managed
so far.
As far as we go, I figured my husband's salary based on the price
of gas recently. In 1995, I was making minimum wage. In an hour, I could buy
four gallons of gas. Today? One hour will buy around three gallons, but we've
also got student loans and five children.
It bothers me a lot. Sometimes I'm sure things will always be like
this, or that they're actually going to get worse. Sometimes I see all the
things we've failed to do for our children, all the time that's slipped by
while we've been failing so miserably, and I get horribly depressed.
But most of the time? I'm certain that things will be better soon.
If when I am old, I am going to walk upon the beach in white flannel trousers
with the bottoms of my trousers rolled, this path must lead somehow to that one
and the beach house where I will stand and look at the ocean and write
beautiful things and paint poetry.
I am not oblivious, though, and I am more naturally a pessimist
than an optimist. I have noticed that things do not always work out for
everyone, and despite the success of those around me now, I have seen failure,
loss, and death.
So why do I still believe things will get better? It had gotten
funny to me, like a mental illness is funny, like you laugh when you watch your
house burn down once your children are out but nothing else can be saved. Last
year, we actually celebrated New Year's by making a hope chain that listed all
the good things we expected or hoped for the new year. This year? I'm keeping
my mouth shut, but the audacious, ridiculous voice inside me that won't. shut.
up. keeps at it—this year. This year will be better.
Something occurred to me tonight. As things get worse, odds of
them continuing to get worse must decrease at a proportionate rate of velocity.
I mean, at some point, the "worse" options become one in a million
because you've already been through most of them. How many times can you crash
your car with an airplane? Or give birth to a ten pound baby AND end up in
NICU?
So maybe hope is logical after all. That silly Hope part of me?
It's cheering at the thought: OF COURSE things are going to get better. All the
stories worth telling have happy endings, after all.
The pessimist part of me isn't all that useful anyway, figured
he'd lose the argument, doesn't really have anything to gain by winning, so
what he thinks is immaterial.
If nothing else, hope is more tenacious than despair. After all,
if hope fails, despair will always be there tomorrow.
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