Optimism

I don't know the exact moment it happened, or even if it happened all at once or over the course of days, weeks, months, years (a lifetime?) I just know that I used to be an optimist. It used to believe in the good in everything, even if I wasn't able to see it. I used to be believe everything happens for a reason. Was it some moment in time this positive outlook was destroyed or did it simply erode? Either way, it's had a detrimental effect on my psyche. Pessimism has become a self fulfilling prophecy. That is what pessimism is at its core. Pessimism does not allow you to succeed. Pessimism does not allow you to believe you can succeed. It's not preparing for the worst so the best is even better. I'm a worrier and a planner and that has nothing to do with pessimism. Being prepared for all outcomes is not pessimism. Being sure that the bad outcome is the one that you're going to get is not being prepared, it's engaging in self sabotage. Getting your hopes up and having them dashed is not optimism. Optimism is believing, even when they have been dashed, that failure is not an end but a beginning and that you fail so that you can succeed. This is the person that I used to be. This is the person whom I need to be again. Somewhere along the line I stopped believing. When you stop believing you feed that nasty energy in the world and it breeds around you like a Cancer. It circles me now, threatening to swallow me whole. But it's not going to do that. This is not how the story of m life goes. Even through the bad things that I can not change, my life is better than this. That it optimism.