The Human Theatre
In the drama of human life, response to uncertainty can take any one of the four avenues. You can be the optimist who sees light ahead, or the pessimist who fears every shadow, the fatalist who is resigned to whatever happens or the fanatic who believe they can rewrite any play. While optimistic and pessimist are more frequently used labels, fanatic and fatalist are the stronger but lesser used labels. But understanding all the four types is critical for knowing their value and how to collaborate with them.
Just imagine leaders of social movements fighting long and hard battle with victory nowhere in the horizon. What keeps them going and motivated if not their positive outlook to life. Think of Nelson Mandela in prison for 27 years with no sight of resolution for apartheid. Optimists take initiative, ignore setbacks and remain motivated and engaged in their long journey surviving only on their positive outlook. But for the optimists, our world would not have seen the stupendous progress we have made on all the fronts.
Pessimist too play a key role in ensuring that the optimists reach their goals. Their ability to anticipate risks and visualize failures is critical for ensuring that we overcome these hurdles and reach our goal. As the pessimists sap our energy and dent our motivation, there are not many historical figures who are renowned pessimists as success erases our memory of their contribution. But they are remembered in the world of art, painting what the world can descend into, to enable us to guard against it. We need to see them as scouts looking out for threats that we need to address on our path to progress.
While it is prudent not to be a fatalist, surrendering to the circumstances and avoiding resistance, yet they teach us a very valuable lesson, the spirit of resilience. The emotional state to face problems that are unresolvable and continue to live within the limitations we have is what every human needs to survive. Wisdom is in accepting the problems that we cannot solve and face the situation as is. Like salt that enhances the flavor of our food, a pinch of fatalism is essential for our living.
A fanatic is the complete opposite of the fatalist, for they believe that reality will conform to their belief. They act with a zeal, reject nuances and see opposition to their views as evil. Unrestrained they create havoc for they do not tolerate alternatives. Fanatics are like torches, they light up the path, but uncontrolled they can burn down the entire house.
For creating the garden of life that we want to live in, we need Optimists, the gardener who plant seeds even in drought trusting it will rain, and the Pessimist, who watch our garden and keeps it free of pests and weeds for us to harvest. Like in food, we need the fatalist like a pinch of salt to enhance the taste but be aware that too much it can render our food inedible. Living in a beautiful garden with appetizing food, we need the fanatics to light up new ways for our progress, being fully aware that uncontrolled, like torches they can burn down our garden.
Easier said than done, a happy live is in being optimistic in vision, pessimistic in visualizing hurdles that we may come across, fatalistic in accepting what we know we cannot change, and fanatically love humanity, peace and non-violence. Tough it is, but we can always try….
Social Profiles