I've been writing a book for the past couple months and I thought I'd post a little rant from it. The book is my accounts of the year I resolved to try something new every day for one year. That year has been one of the most educational and memorable experiences of my life. I've learned a lot about myself (where my comfort zone resides, and how to overcome it) and thought that some of the stories would be fun to read. Below is an exerpt from a very very very rough draft that I am working on. It is probably littered with mistakes, and who knows if I'll even keep it in the final copy, but I figured I'd let you read it...
“Pessimists never left the cave, and never got eaten. Optimists left to explore...and they became lunch. Realists left the caves, but not without a club.” That’s a saying that I’ve heard a lot growing up, especially from my father who is a self confessed realist. It’s a nice little saying, and it means well, but ever since my father first recited it to me, I’ve had a couple of issues. Sure, I see the value of being a realist, who doesn’t? Being a realist -or in other words, being both an optimist and pessimist depending on the situation- makes a lot of sense. Keep you eyes open to the potential wonders of the world, but always be cautious of the eminent pitfalls too. I can dig that Maybe the glass is half full, maybe it’s half empty, or maybe it’s just a glass of lemonade and you should enjoy it without asking so many questions. My dad's outlook towards outlooks make a lot of sense, but this isn’t my dad’s book is it? This is my book, and I’m gonna fill it with as many illogical opinions that I see fit!
I’d like to start off by stating that I consider myself an optimist. When I tell people this, they often give me the same look. I think it’s the same look that people make when their friends tell them how great Kale is. They look at me almost like I'm poking fun at them. Like I see all the problems and annoyances that they’re dealing with and surely I have my own fair share, but instead of doing the socially courteous thing and complain in harmony with them, I chose to dilute my reality with optimism and sunshine. And I get it, life’s hard. Sometimes when you’re venting about your troubles, you’re not looking for an answer. Sometimes you just want to complain about the jerk-off teacher you have, or the court summons you received. Some problems don’t really need a solution, they just need a friend to vent to. It’s become more apparent that I am a crummy friend in these sort of situations.
None of this is to say that I don’t also fall victim of thinking negatively either. Some situations just suck. I’ve gone entire weeks with nothing but rotten days. Just like everybody else, I’ve been embarrassed and taken advantage of. Being optimistic doesn’t prevent or protect me from the shitty things that inevitably will happen to me, in fact it makes it all the more painful when those things do happen. Pessimists only fall a peg or two when they have a bad day, but optimists are falling from dangerous altitudes for the same occurrences. So if being optimistic makes social interactions with normal people awkward, and unfortunate events horribly painful, then why in the world would anyone ever consider being positive? Well, I’d argue, that statistics makes a pretty convincing case to advocate optimism.
Here’s my argument on optimism. Put simply, it’s all a matter of odds. The odds that anyone was ever anything is seriously the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever contemplated. The sheer astronomical -no scratch that, astronomical doesn’t even come close- the sheer hyper-colossal-astronomical odds that you have ever been, is the great unspoken anxiety attack of our lives.
Think about it, really think about it for a second. Just imagine all the shit that had to go completely perfect in order for you to make it to this very sentence. Life is linear, and it’s been going for the past 13.82 billion years. Let me ask you, what are the odds that you’d be able to sink a billiards shot if the pocket hole was 13.82 billion years away? A lot of stuff could get in the way, seems like a slim chance right? Imagine a pool table that stretched out infinitely in every direction, and instead of the standard 16 or so pool balls, there was an innumerable amount of cosmic distractions blocking your shot. Quasars and black holes and any number of planets, stars and space debris whizzing through your balls trajectory. Imagine that you can’t even see the pocket that you’re shooting for. Even if you had the best telescope ever made, it would be of no use because the pocket is so far away that light traveling from it would be taking millions of years to complete it's travel. Then if you somehow pull off that impossible shot, you have to hope that the planet you sent ends up orbiting around a star. This star would have to be stable, and the orbit would have to fall in the Goldilocks Zone so the planet is not too hot and not too cold to support life. The pool table is so large, the obstacles are so many, and the timeline is so great, that they’re not really even odds anymore, are they? Logistically speaking, there’s no way that a shot like that could be made on a cosmic level, it just couldn’t happen.
Cosmically there’s a lot that could go wrong, and it’s truly an oddity that things have worked out so well for us down here on Earth. But space, that’s the easy part, down on Earth is where the odds really get stacked against you. To get to where you are at this very moment the most impressive Rube Goldberg machine has been hard at work. Throughout every single generation that has ever lived, life has been one big killing machine. And through all of those generations, your ancestors somehow navigated through the sea of dangerous and downright deadly hazards long enough to pass on their genes setting off the chain of reactions that eventually ended up making you. They fended off sickness and behooved tragedy constantly. But even if your great, great, great, great (you get the idea) great grandfather survived the onslaught of war and disease, passing his legacy on was still an uphill battle. Shorter life spans and less than ideal transportation made finding love incredibly hard. You needed to find a spouse, and you needed to do so quick. And imagine, if you’re the guy who survives the wars, and beats the sicknesses, and overcomes every odd that life could throw your way, and at the moment you’re about to ask out a girl that could one day become the mother of your children, she notices that you have a piece of lettuce stuck in your teeth. She is tempted to say yes, which would lead to the triumphant march of your genes carrying on into another era, but seeing as the lettuce is rather sizable, decides to say no, killing any chance you had to live on through your ancestory.
So many minute things had to align so perfectly for life to happen, that for any of it to happen at all is amazing. Personally, I know that I owe someone or something an unpayable debt. I think about out it often, how lucky I am. I am a person, and simply to be able to realize that is a miracle. But there’s more. I am a person, living in undoubtedly the most prosperous time throughout all of Earth’s history. Not only am I alive on a small blue planet whirring through space, but I am doing so while avoiding the infinite amount of deadly obstacles that litter our planet’s orbit. And even on Earth, I’m the luckiest to have ever lived. I live in a time of great accessibility. Medicine, goods, transportation, information, communication, all of these are very literally at my fingertips, a luxury that has never been offered before. We have an ever increasing understanding of ourselves and our potential. Diseases that once wiped out entire generations have been eradicated, distances that used to take lifetimes to cross are easily taxied. Never before has our species felt more empowered, and for good reason. Hell, we got out of the food chain, that’s never been done before.
I have rights, and I have free time. And that is something that only a fraction of a percent of the hundred billion or so humans who have lived before me have gotten to enjoy. Most people had a very rough life, and I owe an uncountable number of those people, for my life.
So flying through space on a tiny blue planet is a death wish, and depending on a comically large amount of people throughout history to safely pass on their genetic blueprint in order for me to be here today is beyond impressive, but there’s one more part of this optimism thing that I’d like to explore. So say that the planet safely steered past all the black holes over the past 13 billion years, and suppose that humanity didn’t blow itself up before you had a chance to be. Those odds are nothing compared to the lotto every single living person has won. What are the odds you might ask? Well, to put it simply, the ridiculous odds that the particular sperm that made you, was chosen instead of the 300 million others available.
Do yourself a favor and think about that for a while. Sure our planet is dodging every potential pitfall in sight, and sure our ancestors got pretty damn lucky not dying before they had kids, but this? The 1 in 300 million chance that you were picked to become the baby that your mother would birth is beyond bananas. This fact, tied in with the others (and many that I just don’t have the time to name) is the most ridiculous thing I have ever contemplated. That 13 billion year old billiards shot is so improbable, that our existence should probably be considered to be statistically impossible.
Every single person you see walking around is a winner of this cosmic/genetic/luck lottery. We shouldn’t be here, none of us, but here we are. The greatest underdog story of all time, we not only survived these apocalyptic disasters, but we’re currently thriving in them.
So that’s sort of the direction I go when a coworker of mine complains that I’m bad at listening to their problems. But can you blame me? Seriously, after all that we’ve been through, the eons of life threatening dangers and the ridiculous (I could use any word cause it’s impossible to turn this instance into a hyperbole) odds that we have overcome just to simply be. We have all won an infinite amount of lotteries, and we all owe an infinite amount of people for being in the exact right place in the exact right time throughout history, and you’re telling me that you’re sad because of a little rain? I am a realist because I view my circumstances in a logical way. I leave the cave but I bring a club. And in viewing the world, and the insane odds that I’ve overcome in order to experience it, I have absolutely no choice but to be completely and totally optimistic about it.
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