An open letter …
On losing and the art of pessimism
Last Friday I lost. It was a big night, the Canon Media Awards, a big deal for the print and online publishing industries: premier, prestigious. The kind of night you get a new dress for, perhaps watch what you eat for a week or two prior in order you might forgo the flesh-toned, saddlebagslimming bicycle shorts. The kind of night where a couple of lucky bastards stagger about under the combined weight of their haul of certificates, trophies and congratulatory kisses, and everyone else walks around assuring each other they were “robbed”. It wasn’t my night. I was not a winner. And I was okay with that. Twice already a bridesmaid, I was expecting it actually; was, in fact, prepared for worse, for the emcee to announce there’d been a mistake. That not only was I not a winner, but that I shouldn’t have even been a finalist. That compared to the calibre of my co-nominees, quite frankly, I sucked. Like, seriously, who did I think I was kidding? And once I had gone there, once I had envisaged the full awfulness of that humiliating, smashed-in-the-gut scenario, I felt quite happy really, free to worry, instead, about what else could go wrong. Free to resolve that at these awards I would be a demure presence, gliding graciously about the room. To promise myself that I would keep a lid on the incendiary, regrettable nonsense to spew forth from my big, gobby mouth in previous years. And that if I had to lose, then I would be generous enough to hope my friends and colleagues might yet triumph, rather than praying we might now all go down in one blazing heap of misery.
After reading this, I imagine you have me pegged as a terrible pessimist, and you are naturally at liberty to draw your own conclusions. However, I would argue there is something to be said for the realism of a considerably more negative approach. Pragmatism, rationalism, equipped whatever the outcome: these are traits to be valued. More reliable, anyway, than the fancifulness of optimism, its very deludedness. More trustworthy, surely, than a permanently sunny disposition. Somehow I’ve always felt you must be thick, or at least insincere, to consistently expect a positive result when there is paatentlyl so muchh potentiall for disaster out there.
Of course I have been awware for some time that I am decidedlyy not on-trend with my glum outlookk. Pessimism does not sit well witth modern society’s reverence of personal fulfillment, our pursuit of happiness at any cost.
I’ve always felt you must be thick, or at least t insincere, to consistently expect a positivee result when there is so much potential for disaster.
Recently, however, I have detected a thawing towards optimism’s gloomier sister. A begrudging appreciation has been creeping into the discourse. An acknowledgement that pessimism comes in many forms, and may have its uses. As an anxious person I was gratified to read of a study published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences (not my usual bedtime reading) that found those who are defensively pessimistic are unwittingly calling upon a strategy which allows them to work more productively. That by picturing the worst, they are able to focus less on their emotions, thus freeing them up to act more effectively when the time comes.
Which presumably explains why, last Friday, once my losing ambitions had been confirmed, I sent off a flurryfl off ill-lladviseddd texts, knockedkkd back one too many drinks, and hoovered up the last oof the petits fours, all while enthusiastically, and ever soo slightly out of time, cutting up the rug.
FOLLOWING ON
thers were moved to write in wwith their thoughts on how to reconcile what we haave with what others haven’t after last week’s column. Bev said last year she travelled throughh India with her wn driver and “saw a wooman sweeping the reshold of her home, wwhich was just a few its of cardboard and wood attached to a similar homme. She used her stick broom wwith much pride.” Damian saaid he has “a heap of sympathy for the less fortunate in other coountries ... We are farmers and not much comes easy but the menm in New Zealand who think they live in poverty, to me simpply don’t work hard enough.”