Hello! You’re getting older, fatter and your hair is thinning.  Hooray!!  Optimism is a funny idea.  It’s not really funny, I don’t know why I said that.  Strong start. 

Let’s back up.  How do you feel about yourself right now in this moment?  Think about your weight, your wrinkles, your career, family, friends, etc.  How would you rate the success you’re having in those individual boxes? Is it stressful to think about or relaxing?

Now take a giant step back and think about the big picture of your life.  You might be stressed about money, raising kids, aging, the future of AI or a million other things.  If you back up far enough, until the Earth is a small dot in the vast emptiness of space, all of those worries kind of fall to the wayside.  You’re just a single individual experiencing this once in a lifetime ultimate theme park ride called ‘life.’   I want you to keep that in mind throughout. 

Optimism is Hard Because Life Sucks Balls Sometimes

Here’s the thing:  We all know we should be more optimistic, but it can be really hard when so much crud is happening in our everyday life.  We’ve all heard those overly optimistic people who say things like, “Every time you projectile vomit remember to be thankful that you have working internal organs.”  

F*ck off Hallmark lady, ya know?  I’m over here feeling like death itself and your advice is to be thankful that I could afford to buy the food I’m now hurling back up?  People who are too optimistic and bubbly are annoying to the rest of us who live life with two feet on the ground.  That being said, I’ve been attempting to actually be more optimistic of late in my overall pursuit of daily happiness.  

For a long time I was afraid to be optimistic.  Not that I thought life wasn’t going to get better but because I thought being optimistic made me a douche.  I’d listen to sad music, embrace my young adult angst, and generally had a pretty great time writing and playing sad sack music.  Those were the days… 

Granted, my life is actually way better now so I’m not a great case study, but overall I feel happier day to day after I gave myself permission to be optimistic.

Happiness is an Everyday Occurrence

Some time ago I realized that happiness isn’t an end goal that you get to one day after years of hard work.  We don’t get to choose everything about our lives and interactions, but we can choose how we react to them.  How we react to negative situations dictates how happy we’ll be day to day.  Since life isn’t lived in this mythical tomorrow land, but on a day to day basis in the present, how we interact with the world around us ultimately dictates our level of happiness.  

You’ll inevitably have negative things happen to you.  Loved ones will die, you’ll find yourself working with irritating people, you might run into someone you know at the grocery store and be forced to engage in several minutes of small talk.  Life is full of situations that warrant a negative response from us.  

Related: Why Small Talk is The Worst

Mr. Burrito Bowl is Losing His Hair

This is where optimism comes in.  I’m balding.  My hair is going away at a fairly rapid rate.  While this has not kept me up any nights, it has caused me to purse my lips in the mirror more than a few times while I notice bits of my scalp I’d never seen before. 

If I knew Rogaine would work I’d actually use it.  I bought some knock off Kirkland brand stuff but it doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference and I’m too frugal to buy designer brand Rogaine.  I don’t care if it is vain, I’m classically handsome and I want to keep it that way.  Don’t go quietly into the night, hair.

Listen, I don’t mind the idea of being entirely bald and just shaving my head, but I don’t like this transition period where I have too much hair to warrant a complete head shave but I can tell the party is winding down.  I feel like the top of my head is that guy at the party who’s pouring himself another drink while the host is turning the lights out and everyone is heading for the door.

I can either curse my genetics or be happy that I got thirty-two years of having a full head of hair.  Ok, I got twenty-seven years of fairly thick hair growth, but we’ve been doing a great job of hanging in there these last five years.  Honestly, I thought I’d go bald well before I turned thirty.  My point is, I can either be upset that my hair is retreating or I can just go with the flow and not worry about it.  

What’s Your Balding Trigger Point?

Maybe you have a thick head of luxurious hair, but your pant size keeps increasing.  Maybe you’re starting to notice wrinkles.  When you look in the mirror you see that one wrinkle that’s already noticeable, or you see that one streak of grey hair. 

Instead of being embarrassed about your grey hair, wrinkle, thinning hairline, expanding waist, etc. think of how you’ll look ten years from now.  In ten years you’ll probably have a whole face of wrinkles starting to show.  I might be cueball levels of bald in ten years.  Your entire head might be grey hair.  This is a positive.  Stick with me.

Today is the youngest you’ll ever be again. 

That’s not meant to be discouraging.  It’s meant to be empowering.  If you from ten years into the future could come back and talk to you of the present, future you would probably want current you to know how great and young you look.  They’d say don’t let that one stupid wrinkle ruin your day.  They’d probably say something like, “WOW! I remember only having ONE wrinkle?!? Is that just the GREATEST feeling to have a mostly smooth face or what?!”

Of course you’re moping around like a fat kid who just watched his ice cream cone fall on the sidewalk because you have that one wrinkle that you think makes you hideous.  Future you will be WAY more hideous!  Enjoy your moderately young looking face now while you still have it!

It seems to be a common human trait to constantly be looking at the past to see what we’ve lost instead of looking to the future to remind us how much we have in the present.  

One day my knees will ache and my back will give me fits when I try to walk up stairs.  I think about that a lot.  I love being young.  It’s fantastic.  It’s important to remind yourself just how lucky you are.   

If you’re already to the point that your knees ache and your back hurts, well, at least you’re not dead.  A lot of people are dead.  Most people are dead.  The vast majority of people who have ever lived are just laying there being dead.  You’re not dead, you wrinkly crazy old bird, you.  

Being Thankful For What You Still Have

I’m lucky enough to still have two of my grandparents with me.  One day I’ll wake up and they’ll have been gone for ten years.  It’s a good reminder to be thankful for what you have today. 

Life is constantly changing and some of the things we all take for granted today will be gone soon.  When that day comes you’d trade all your dumb possessions in a heartbeat just to have the chance to go back to today for an afternoon.  

Don’t rush through life.  It goes by incredibly fast.  I was a kid not too long ago. Now, I own a kid of my own.  

So, be thankful and don’t be afraid to be optimistic.  

Key Takeaways:

Don’t rush through life waiting for that day you’ll be happy.  You have to cultivate happiness in the day to day moments.  That mythical tomorrow where all your problems are gone is just that, a myth.  Happiness comes from being thankful and living in the moment.

Don’t hate your body for getting older, be proud of it.  You are not your body.  Your body is just the vehicle you get to experience life through.  Treat your body like this amazing gift that it is.  You can do all sorts of cool sh*t through your body that you wouldn’t be able to do if you were just your consciousness.  Appreciate your body and don’t wish away the wrinkles.

Be optimistic.  You can be pessimistic if you want but that’s just going to make you kind of hate life.  You don’t have to be annoyingly optimistic, but you can have a slight hint of optimism to your overall demeanor.  Think of optimism as a perfume, a dab will do you.  When people wear too much perfume I want to cough on them.  When they have just a hint of perfume, it’s really nice.  Be that way with optimism.

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