From desperation to appreciation

School started this week, and I find the infectious optimism of elementary students at the beginning of a school year to be a welcome relief from the relentless pessimism that has come to define everyday American life in recent months. There is much for a student to be excited about: the joy of reunion with good friends; the tactile pleasure of crisp new notebooks and freshly-sharpened pencils; the emotional thrill of learning the way to new classrooms in familiar buildings. All of it tempered only slightly by the prospect of what is sure to come: nightly homework, regular tests, and weekend projects.

The optimism is a welcome contrast the relentlessly pessimistic stream of news that now flows seemingly every day: of jobs lost, house values declining, investors fleeing, wars expanding, and politicians arguing. Certainly, anyone directly affected, who has actually lost a job, or defaulted on a mortgage, or been injured in a war, has reason to complain and worry. But I've noticed that much of the fretting around me comes from people who have not been touched in any of those ways. For some reason, they just like to worry and complain.

When earlier this year I came across the Latin phrase amor fati (literally, love of one's fate), it struck me as a good attitude to adopt in uncertain times. In the latter half of the twentieth century, it became too easy for many of us to seemingly control fate by controlling our lives: changing jobs, changing houses, changing spouses, even changing faces (or at least noses) at a whim. We didn't have to accept fate, we could change it. Life could always get better.

I don't think adopting amor fati means giving up on optimism; it means embracing actual experience. Your life is what it is, not what you wish it to be. Celebrate it! Human nature is to push higher, farther, and faster. Do that, certainly, but accept that sometimes your push forward won't work. Things do not always work out how we plan--that means our plans were bad, but it doesn't have to mean our lives are bad. Setbacks are not the end of the world; they are a part of life, and we should use them to yield not desperation but appreciation. It is a joy just to be alive, and that realization is the beginning of optimism.