I used to think it was much cooler to be a pessimist. The darkness just drew me in. Unlike the bright, happy optimists I’ve known, pessimism was all about ‘reality,’ and therefore it had more depth. Life was not going to be all sweet smells and gentle, soothing music–it was going to get rough and jagged, so it was better to be prepared for that.

These days, though, I don’t agree with that point of view anymore. Not that I’m an optimist at every turn, but I’ve found that looking at the bleak side of a situation isn’t always the healthiest approach. Sure, it gets your mind prepared for what might go wrong, and that can be useful. At the same time, though, it eats up valuable energy–which for us humans is a finite resource. Why waste time and space in your head on stuff that might possibly–but very well may never–go wrong?

Whether it’s contemplating a writing project, or just a bus ride to the grocery store, it takes a good deal of energy to always be concentrating on what might go wrong. And that, frankly, is wasted energy. Sure, we all are smart enough to know that things don’t always go the way we hope they will–that’s just life. The bus might break down and you’ll have to walk two miles in the rain; or your laptop will suddenly show a blank screen, and all those fantastic words you’ve been writing will disappear.

Yes, there’s no doubt about it, those things can suck. But dwelling on that ‘things go wrong’ scenario before it even happens? That’s what eats us up and drags us down. That’s the sort of negative energy that gnaw us from the inside, and ultimately then can keep us from ever opening that laptop–or even leaving the house.

It’s easy to think about what might go wrong. Too easy, in fact. And what really is happening, is that the “things go wrong” thoughts begin to take over–they get in the way of not only the happy “things go right” attitude, but progress as a whole, which can keep us from ever taking that crucial next step. And we need to take that step. Moving forward, stepping into the unknown–even if that bus could possibly break down–that’s what life is about. That’s living. Life is short, so act now.

So that, to me, is what optimism is all about. Even if the immediate moment sucks–the rainstorm, for instance, that chose to bust open just as you set out walking to the next bus stop–in the long run, you will come out ahead. You took that step out into the rain–you took action. Or, to bring it back around to writing, the laptop may have stopped working for the moment, but still you found a way to put words on a page. Even if you have a feeling that the sentence you just wrote might be the single most horrific in the history of mankind, you still went ahead and wrote it. And in some small way, that action took you somewhere.

So the point is, don’t let the dark side suck you in. Don’t let it slow you down. Don’t fall into the pessimism trap. Get out into the rain–you might find you don’t mind it as much as you thought. And, strangely, enough, you might even like it.