Sitting down and staring at the blank slate of a new project can be intimidating, and it can fill our minds with both excitement and dread. Where do we find the inspiration for our work? How do we identify the important elements to link together? Optimism and pessimism wrestle for control of our thoughts like an angel whispering in one ear and a devil whispering in the other. We have aspirations, but we also have self-doubt. We have ideas, plans, dreams, goals. And we have uncertainty, hesitancy, ambivalence and self-doubt.
The Devil’s Kitchen Visited by an Angel – Conrad Meyer
If you are a pessimist, you go through life believing the world is a disappointing place. Whenever you encounter a disappointing situation, it confirms your world view. You expect it, accept it, and throw your hands up saying, “There you go — that’s life.” Pessimism allows you to categorize bad things, capture them in a mental framework, put them in a box. It makes life’s hard knocks more tolerable, in some ways, because they’re expected. They are like the arrival of winter: bitter, yet known in advance and foreseen by the calendar. You are always aware that life involves winters.
If you’re an optimist you go through life believing the world is a rewarding place. It is filled with opportunities and discoveries. When you encounter a disappointing situation, you view it as a challenge. It may be a learning experience or an opportunity for growth. It may make you stronger. It’s the storm cloud in the sky that makes the sunrise more dramatic. It reminds you that you have many blessings in your life if you open your eyes to them. You shake your head and say, “It’ll all work out in the end. We’ll get through this. We always do. We’ll be alright.” And when you do get through it, the recovery has confirmed your optimistic world view.
Pessimism, from the word “pessimus” meaning “worst,” manifests as cynicism, skepticism, doubt, disillusionment. The pessimist’s cup is half empty. “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Optimism springs from “optimus” meaning “best” and manifests as hope, expectation, encouragement. The optimist’s cup is half full. “Look on the bright side.”
If you are a pessimist, the world’s animating energy exists externally all around you, and you spend your days navigating the events that life throws your way. You see risk; your primary mode is to react. If you’re an optimist, the animating energy exists within you, and you channel that energy into life’s events. You see opportunity; your primary mode is to act.
Pessimists often connect with fatalists, who see life’s events as pre-determined details of fate or destiny. They resign themselves to the belief that outcomes are inevitable. “If you want to get up, get up; if you want to stay in bed, stay in bed; the choice you make is not really a choice at all,” they argue. “It’s a choreographed dance in a movie playing on a projector.”
By contrast, optimists tend to like free will. They believe individuals have the freedom to choose our own directions, to manifest our own destinies, to pen our own histories. The conclusion of our movie is not yet known because it will be determined by the choices we make in each scene along the way.
I happen to be a card-carrying member of the free-will club. The belief that I can affect certain outcomes is motivating. It is exciting. It is empowering. But it is also more personally challenging. After all, if we are free to make choices, and the choices we make have consequences, the consequences of our actions can be held to account. Our choices can be wise or foolish, virtuous or vicious, selfish or generous. The question lurks in the back of our minds, “What do I have to show for my life?” Free will hangs heavy with judgement. Choice carries responsibility!
By contrast, if the actions of our lives have already been pre-determined by some grand plan, then there is no blame for what we do or don’t do, say or don’t say, feel or don’t feel. We may go unencumbered through life and just be, with less judgment. (“More taste! Less calories!”) And that is quite liberating. It removes the pressure of potentially making wrong decisions. There is no praise for accomplishments or condemnation for shortcomings. “If you want to get out of bed, get out of bed. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter anyway.” This philosophy has a certain morphine effect. If our actions don’t measure up to some standards, “Who cares? I don’t accept those standards. They’re not MY standards!” By the way, this is also a convenient world view for cynical culture.
There is also a practical reason to adopt the free-will mindset: resilience.
Consider this. When things go wrong for a fatalist, she tends to see it as inevitable and accept it. For instance, think about the disintegration of a marriage. The fatalist’s tendency is to see the growing gap between her and her spouse as inevitable. Whereas when the same things go wrong for a free-willy (or whatever we’re calling people who embrace free will), she faces the choice to either accept them as they are, or commit herself to finding a way to address them. In the end they may both end up in walking away from their relationships. But for the person who believes her choices steer the outcome, she may be more willing to find an alternate outcome.
This will to overcome resistance is fundamental to the creative process.
Projects don’t just create themselves. The creative process is littered with trial and error, failed experiments, blind alleys, delirious whiteboards, waste-paper baskets overflowing with discarded drafts. Creating involves trying, assessing, and trying some more, over and over and over and over. Rinse, wash, repeat.
Sometimes we pour our heart into developing a project only to later realize, “This just isn’t working.”
What we do next is key to the outcome.
Do we accept it, scrap it, and move on? Or do we retrace our work back to an earlier version and try a new variation? And what happens the next time we hit a roadblock? And what about the next time? Many motivational quotes spring from this resilience. “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.”
Finding the initial direction for a project may come easily or may come only after great effort. But sustaining that direction until the project’s completion inevitably involves great effort. Along the way, the choices we make determine whether we stop our work before the project is finished or only after it is finished.