optimistic cynic
finding the sacred in the mundane (september's RECAP)
My mom called me a fatalist the other day. I laughed when she said it because I immediately remembered my dad had called me an idealist months prior. I spent the majority of the month of September trying to figure out which one I related to the most. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I guess depending on the day I feel one side of the spectrum more than the other. Sometimes I feel all hues of the spectrum at the same time.
My dad called me an idealist because he thinks I expect too much of people. My mom called me a fatalist because she thinks I expect too little. They’re both right. I believe we, as a collective, are the best chance we have at making this life less painful than it is. I also believe life is only painful because we don’t know how to interact with each other without hurting each other. Maybe I can only be as cynical as I am because I am also an optimist. I am aware of how the world works, and I still think we can change it.
I used to see everything in shades, black and white. Somewhere along the last year I got more comfortable with existing in the liminal space of contradiction. That’s why I don’t believe when people say we can’t change. We can. I have. It’s just hard to do, and we have conviced each other that hard is equal to impossible.
A writer I love1 once wrote that the inability to imagine a better future is a self-imposed punishment. That the permanent apocalypse we live in is a story we tell ourselves, and we do it by constantly denying ourselves the possibility to imagine a different reality. Our lack of imagination is a way of lowering our expectations. It’s proof of how conditioned we’ve been to accept whatever the machine imposes on us. I understand. I too have been hesitant to believe and convinced that change is impossible to achieve, but that idealistic part of me is always fighting back and reminding me that lowering our heads down is how we loose. We could change things if we wanted to. Don’t we want to?