Optimism

Garfield comics

My Blogger dashboard shows that there have been eight searches for ‘optimism’ in my blog posts during the last few days. Out of curiosity, I did a search myself and was amused to find pessimism topping the suggested links. The second was a post on cynicism. The posts more directly related to optimism followed and they were few and far between. I haven’t been quite optimistic, it looks like.

I remember one of the first classes taken for the staff by a lady who belonged to a religious cult which had taken over my school in Delhi. At one moment, I quipped in response to a remark she made, “I’m falling in love with your class.” Pat came her response, “Sarcasm, I can take it.” I wasn’t being sarcastic at least that time. She was a good teacher in the sense she had all the skills required to drive home points effectively so much so my admiration for her rose as days went by. Eventually, however, she proved to be a witch in angel’s garb. She succeeded in getting the school closed down so that her religious cult could use the huge campus as parking space for her Baba’s rich devotees.

I dedicated to her and her cult my second collection of short stories, The Nomad Learns Morality. My first collection, ten years prior to the second, was also dedicated to another similar person who messed up my life by pretending to be my well-wisher. These two persons together took away my trust in people altogether.

Optimism became quite impossible for me. Sarcasm came to me much more naturally than ever. It touched cynicism quite often. The only place where sarcasm and cynicism take leave of me is the classroom where the young hearts throb with optimism and sweet dreams. That sweetness is contagious.

I wish the world offered me more such sweetness. I know that is wishful thinking. You can call it optimism if you prefer. After all, optimism, like other attitudes, is a choice. A very hard one for me, though.