The blessing about life that we often miss is that as long as you're alive life goes on. You live to see another day and perhaps that day can be better than your previous days. It behooves us to live life one day at a time for we know not what tomorrow may bring.
This truth can become clouded after a bad break up, divorce, loss, or termination from a job. The same optimism that you once had when you were with your significant other or on that job interview is the same optimism that you must strive to get back to and getting there is a process. It takes a certain optimism to move forward in spite of your current circumstances. There are other times when optimism is not about moving forward but staying right where you are knowing with certainty that things will improve.
By no means am I talking about a blind optimism. If anything, I want to present an optimism that is tangibly grounded in reality. One of the ways that I conceptualize my optimism is through assessment. I first ask myself if what I am trying to accomplish is even feasible. If Z is possible then I will start at A. What optimism doesn't overlook is the fact that there are the risks associated with traversing from A to Z. Rather it takes into account those risks and asks whether or not those risks are enough to keep one from reaching Z.
In my life there were times when I thought that situations would not improve but I had to know that they would. Thinking and knowing of course are two different things. Thinking speaks to the temporal, fleeting synapses of the brain but knowing speaks to the deep seeded composition of truth that is foundational to the life of the mind. I'm thankful that I was able to coalesce my thoughts around what I knew to produce an optimism that lifted me out of dark times.
A scripture that is the basis for my optimism is Romans 8:28:
"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."
I love the certainty with which the Apostle Paul speaks to the Church at Rome. At this time Rome was a thriving metropolis and was pretty much the seat of the world. Can you imagine the things that occurred in this bustling city where Christians (the ridiculed, despised new religion of that time) were thrown in jail or the lion's den for the entertainment of the masses? Or consider Paul, who at this point had been beaten, jailed, run out of town a couple of times, and shipwrecked. Yet and still under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he gives us certainty in knowing that all things work together for the good. Not some things or things that seem pleasing or positive but all things. Even our sufferings, hurts, and despair is at work for the good that God has seen fit.
Take refuge in knowing that all things work together for the pleasure of God's will. O for grace that we may comprehend the purpose of what God allows in our lives for His will and the optimism to press forward in spite of that which we have not yet readily comprehended.
-WAC, III-
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