My optimistic Philosophy that I wrote many years ago. "What I've learnt in recent years"

[lwlaiet8887]

- It's important to be grounded in reality through foresight and understanding the consequences of your actions. Reason being is you can't truly be in control of your life you don't know the consequences and rational of your actions. Consequences are important to keep in mind as through error and fool hardiness can you set yourself back despite having the correct intentions for yourself. Rational is important is important as you must have purpose in your life to be fulfilled and to know what actions must be taken to further your goals, the principle of "understanding reality"

- The value of an orderly life. Life is dictated by monotony, daily routines consisting of waking and working, but there's excellence to be found in this process. Every skilled being has devoted and endured labor to be good at their craft, so is this not transparent as what's required to succeed? And does it snow show the value of discipline? Furthermore, this perspective doesn't only focus on skill but also the potential to enrich your life through the discipline and actions which "order" promotes. in-gaining new hobbies, fulfilling relationships, experiences, gaining knowledge. This could ultimately be summed up to as living a fufilling life in the eyes of the ambitious

- What's the antithesis to order? Failure. Often in life things can not go as planned which can be devastating to our psyche as it's inherently hard to live with and understand. Dealing with failure can't be easy. But ultimately we know in the back of our minds that we must continue as dictated by the will of the human spirit. Failure can completely change the course of your life, but as long you have purpose to live there's a desire to continue. Say for example, you missed out on the job of your dreams and consequently fell into a deep depression and as a result your life continues to stagnate, now imagine your optimistic younger-self looking at your circumstances, do you think they'd be content with your situation? Your younger self with all of his optimism would wonder why'd you lose hope and had not thought about future opportunities awaiting. And your future self, they would feel a great despair and regret that they wasted so many years due to inaction. Not all failure is bad, failure can teach you many valuable lessons and increase your resolve. Many great men were made by their failures and many men were destroyed by failure. Failure is a reality of life, but how you choose to see it determines whether it'll make or break you.

(I wrote this a few years ago for myself, posting it as a sort of archive but maybe it could help someone)

 

[DepressedSloth]

I would say I agree with most of this. I won't argue with anything because that's not what you are asking in this post lol. I will add my perspective because I think about things that are very relevant to all of this. Pessimism and Optimism aren't mutually exclusive. Also, philosophical pessimism is different from psychological pessimism, and I think optimism can also be separated in this way. A good example of how both can be integrated is in the basics of Buddhist philosophy.

Pessimism: Life is suffering.
Neutral: There are causes and conditions to this suffering.
Optimism: There are ways to reduce the degree of suffering in yourself and others.
Discipline: Making, to the best of ones ability, efforts to implement these means by which one can reduce suffering.

Hope my comment and input was relevant enough, and helpful. And thank you for your post.