Pessimist vs. Optimist

If you've read my blog before, you know I spend a lot of time thinking - especially about people. The other day I was thinking and wondering what the difference was between optimists and pessimists. Probability would lead me to think that good and bad things happen to just about everyone; and the number of good and bad things even out over time. There might be good days and bad days, good months and bad months, good years and bad years, but overall things probably just about even out. That being said, we probably all know people who are (or at least seem) happy nearly every day, and - vice versa - people who are mad/sad everyday and complain about everything. So, I guess I should clarify that I'm calling perpetually happy/positive people "Optimists" and perpetually negative people - though not clinically depressed - "Pessimists". And I do not consider people who ACT happy in public but are really miserable in private to be optimists; those people are not optimists or happy, just good actors.

Generally speaking, I tend to view or see each human being as being on a nearly infinite amount of spectrums for every imaginable physiological, biological, and personality trait - "level of optimism/pessimism" being just one of them.

What I came up with is that our existence is made up of successive, or simultaneous, neutral events. Without getting into constructivism, events are not good or bad in and of themselves. People construct their 'reality' based on previous experiences and attitudes toward those experiences.

Assuming events are neutral and people alone attribute values to them, most people have the ability to (and/or just do) reframe how events impact them. Reframing is a psychology term that roughly equates to "spinning". I think optimists have the ability to reframe, or spin, more situations in their own minds. For example, let's say a person is driving down the road and is held to a slower than ideal speed by a car driving slow in front of them. A pessimist would probably get frustrated and upset and perhance even complain or yell (heaven forbid tailgate the person in front), whereas an optimist might simply not worry about it. The optimist may even justify why the person in front of them is going slow - because they are looking for an address or trying to be safe. Some optimists might even be able to reframe the situation as "meant to be", like maybe by going slow, they will avoid getting a ticket or getting in an accident as if the slow driver was sent by God to keep the optimist out of trouble.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you reframe things in your mind to have them "fit" a happier reality? Or is the world out to get you?

Me? I'm a realist. It is what it is and I call it how I see it. ;)