The Boiled Egg of Infinity

I wrote this on my palmtop a few weeks back – thought it might be interesting to stick it up here and see what you think. Apologies for the longer than expected break: lots of stuff been happening, but I’m hoping to be able to get back into the swing of things a little more from now on.

Tonight, as we sat in a café, my fiancé described me as being being a “resolutely glass half empty” sort of guy. Though she smiled as she said it, I’ll be the first to admit that it rings true for me: I am very pessimistic by nature. Which is strange because I’m luckier than most when you stop to think about it (which I’m hoping you will!). My parents love one another, I grew up happy, went to university, wanted for nothing as I grew up, had the usual crushes/disasters/successes in relationships, got a job, met my fiancé…while I have had bad things happen to me in my life (bereavement, upset, disappointment etc), on reflection the good far outweighs the bad. Like I said earlier, when you think about all the bad things in the world I’ve been remarkably fortunate to see most of them miss me.

All of which begs the question: where, in all of this largely positive life, with more going for me than not, did such a resolutely pessimistic point of view come from? Or to put it another way, why has long experience of good led me always to expect the bad?

The dime store psychotherapist in me (holding his battered copy of Gleitman’s “Basic Psychology” in one hand and his hand-written diploma, with the ink still wet, in the other) thinks it might be an expectations thing: the more my life goes okay the more I expect the other shoe to drop and for things to start going badly. Which really is, like most considered cogitations from dime store psychotherapists, a whole load of the most terrible shite when you think about it.

Another way of looking at it would be as some sort of defence mechanism: by keeping my expectations of people and situations low, it makes it more difficult for me to be let down. Or, to put it simply, if I always expect the worst, I can never be disappointed because things will always go better than I think they will. Which is fine until you consider my life to date: I’m a hell of a lot more fortunate than most and haven’t had any horrible experiences to scar my psyche and lead it to develop a defence system. Another one for the “shite” column if you ask me.

My pessimism could also be a by-product of my personality. I’m a worrier – I find it very difficult to relax, I always worry about consequences and never live in the moment. Maybe that’s where my pessimism comes from: a personality that is always thinking, never relaxing and often over-analysing things to the smallest detail. Perhaps worrying and pessimism go hand in hand: worry only comes about when you’re aware of negative consequences and it helps introduce a note of warning to an otherwise blithely unaware point of view. If that’s the case then it’s possible my lifetime of worrying has skewed my viewpoint, resulting in a pessimistic outlook: the warning light is stuck on, and now I’m stuck in the habit of only seeing the bad side of anything and anyone.

If I had the time to type them and you the endless patience to read them, I dare say I could come up with a million and one possible reasons for why I am the way I am. None of which would help me to find the real reason or to help me be in any way less pessimistic than I already am. Maybe I just need to accept that for me the glass will always be half empty…or maybe I need to take the advice of the woman I love, which boils down to one word, one single thing she thinks I need to do to start to enjoy life more: relax.

Sounds simple enough. Execution might be a little tricky though.

Thanks for sticking with me, I really appreciate your patience. I know this place should be updated more often and I promise, I’m really going to try. Life just has a habit of getting in the way.