Cheerful Despair: a pessimist state of mind

How a pessimist finds happiness?

We are not a bunch of gloomy people, we are in fact the happiest of the lot. We see life as not a good road with small rocks here and there, but a bad road with good patches here and there.

Our daily lives are filled with disappointments, not being understood by your loved ones, and things not going the right way makes you angry and sad because deep down you still have hope that your life partner will understand you, things will definitely work out at the end, and there will be fewer disappointments.

Instead of having hope and expectations on life like optimistic people, pessimists don’t have anything to expect from the world.

We think the world is full of suffering, greed and lust ,when good things do happen, we cherish them.

When good things happen to us, it is delightful, slightly improbable but very noteworthy backing of an always expected tragedy.

Unlike optimists who take happiness and joy as a baseline for existence, pessimists take suffering and sadness as a baseline.

Hence whenever misfortune strikes, an optimist finds it as a glitch, as an obstacle, the pessimist would not be surprised with the constant accidents and misfortunes because, we take it granted that life is tragic, every pain-free day of living is a blessing.

Once we acquire this skill of cheerful despair, life acquires a distinctive kind of sweetness to it.

Originally published at medium.com

Originally published at https://thriveglobal.com.