Pessimism is the new moisturizer

People write about hope, about faith, about beliefs and about as many optimistic things as they can in order to comfort themselves and others. Pessimism is considered as abnormal and is criticized. You are criticized when you weep over your last love. You are criticized when you think yourself as a failure and so on. There are negative labels for people being pessimistic, labels so that people can stay away from that gloomy zone.

It’s time for human to all be cynical, to get real, because the time for “happy ending” has long time gone. What if Prince Charming had never shown up? Would Snow White have slept in that glass coffin forever? Or would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, got a job and made enough money to support herself? She certainly does not need a Prince Charming to bring home the bread and the meat. And, in this time and age, she certainly does not need a Prince Charming to have a happy ending, especially when she may as well just get a baby from her local neighborhood sperm bank. It’s not that hard, you just need to get out there and do it.

But then, the more cynical the world gets, more people rely on fantasy. Reality shows may be forgotten after a decade or two, but fairy tales are passed on from generations to generations, along with more sequels and, of course, more absurd happy endings. What is that that makes it so hard for people to get real? What is it that so hard for people to face with the truth? They’d rather be in pain time after time immensing themselves in fantasy than bear a sharp pain and get it over with. People enjoy sugarcoat after all.

Do we really need to hope in order to survive? Is it better to tell a friend right at their face that the good times together have passed by and there’s no way to recreate all those good memories? Or is it better just to give the other person a date knowing that it’s just no more than a false promise which does not need to be kept? It would be a good thing if they both understand that it’s just a false promise. But what if one of them is still hoping for it to come true? What if that one person day by day wait for an email or a text message, or even worse, keep sending emails and text messages like a psycho, but receive nothing back but silence, or even worse, rejection from a total stranger and only then, bitterly realize that it’s over.

Isn’t it better for a patient to know that he only has so many days to live, so he can live those days to the fullest? Or is it better for him to be sick in bed, looking out the window and hoping that eventually, he’ll be out there when in reality, he would never be?

Doesn’t it work the same in love? They say that in a relationship, the person with less passion control it. Isn’t that right? So when the person in charge, the more critical and less emotional one, realizes that the relationship is not working and decides to get out of it, why is it that she’s always considered cruel, cold-hearted and has no feelings? Isn’t it better to end it before they both hurt each other? Or is it better to keep going to pretend that their relationship is so perfect that people get jealous? The relationship will eventually fall apart. The important thing is how you can still keep each other in life. It’s not an easy thing to do. Love does not always conquer all, especially in an era where everything: financial, social status, religious, genders, family, friends,... matters. I’d rather receive a “he’s not that into you” message after a first date than wait weeks after that to receive a lame email with some lame excuses. It’s because people keep leading one another with hopes that eventually, the world runs out of hope and becomes hopeless. People learn by making mistakes. So how many times can a person take having all their hopes and beliefs destroyed before becoming a cynical? How long can a person remain optimistic after so much disappointment? How many times is it going to take a girl dreaming of romance to scream out “If there were no men, we wouldn’t feel hurt, and we wouldn’t be disappointed, and we wouldn’t be spending our entire night upsetting about them. I’m so over men.” Isn’t that the saddest thing ever, to have your hopes and your dreams falling out of your mental system?

Then why is it that we cannot stick to the truth? If there’s truth everywhere, people would know where to put their hopes and dreams into the right place. There would be no such harsh and painful words as “Et tu, Brutus?” or “I trusted you”, with a past tense. There is no way to make everyone happy and if a person faces with world with that belief and readiness, sure there would be less painful moments and more happy surprises.

I got to think, maybe pessimism is something we have to start applying daily, like moisturizer. Otherwise, how would you bounce back when reality battles your belief system and love does not, as promised, conquer all? Is hope a drug we need to go off of? Or is it keeping us alive? What’s the harm in believing? Or rather, what’s the point in believing?

[az]