On optimism

I still attend church regularly.  That surprises some of the people I know, and occasionally they want to know why.  One reason is it offers me set-aside time for introspection each week.  As a highly imperfect person, in  meetings with other highly imperfect people, I get the chance to think about improving, changing, growing, and exactly what I want to grow into this time.

Last Sunday we discussed what it means to live in troubling times.  For the record, I wonder if the times we have been given are more or less troubling than any other times.  In any case, it is true that the times we are given are often troubling.  We lived through a very troubling Friday, December 14, 2012.  A discussion on troubling times was apropos.

So what did the discussion unearth for me?  The take-home message was one of optimism.  Not only is this the worst of times, but it is also the best of times.  Life is hard, but there are more people trying to do good than there are those trying to tear down the world.

And the message of optimism, it reminded me of my maternal grandfather.

Grandpa was optimistic sometimes to a fault.  When I was a teenager, I often spent time in his kitchen, discussing life and future over homemade bread and yogurt.  To him, the world was a wonderful place, bursting with opportunity.  He was sure that for me, as a young person in that world, there was nothing I couldn't do.  He was ever happy, encouraging, teasing, and proud.  Me, I was more of a realist, but even so, his words helped me see possibilities I had never considered, and from there, to map out a future.

Grandpa was an educator.  He had earned a PhD from Columbia University, funded by the GI bill.  He worked for a time at G.O.D. University, like me, until he couldn't stand the politics there.  He was the first religious liberal I knew, at a time when all my friends and neighbors, and parents, were conservative.  His intelligence, his wit, and his eternal optimism helped me to understand that life is not painted in black and white.  It is painted in color.

Looking back, I wonder how he remained an optimist.  His employment with G.O.D. was a complete disaster.  There were times his family lived through extreme poverty, in places far from friends and family.  He ran for political office multiple times in an extremely conservative state, and was defeated soundly; even the signs he posted were abused and vandalized.  He was acquainted with failure.

I'm acquainted with failure, although not to the extremes he faced.  And then add to that the troubling times, and life becomes heavy.  We carry on, beaten, sometimes only because the alternative is more frightening.  But he carried on laughing.

Looking at my life last Sunday, and where it needed to grow, I realized that I could do worse than to be more optimistic, like Grandpa, for now. There is still so much that is good.  Find that.  Encourage that.  Be that.