Feel good about where you are now. Your life may not be perfect, but it is probably much better than it used to be.
I get it. Life is very stressful for people. Most people are just struggling to survive, and we can have distorted thinking because the media is always feeding us negative stories. Being an optimist is considered unreasonable and naive. That’s ok if people feel that way. For me being optimistic is just a more helpful attitude than anything else.
Why is this helpful? Look at it this way. If you are a cynic then people don’t want to be around you or they are negative themselves. It is very easy to find people who want to be negative about others. Those people are rarely mentally healthy people. Mentally healthy people don’t need to tear down others to make themselves feel good. If you are indifferent then each day is just about getting through it. I don’t want to live my life with the attitude of just getting through it. I am not a turtle, but a vulnerable person who will get hurt sometimes and make unhelpful decisions.
To me looking forward to each moment with hope seems the only logical way to live life. Yes often life isn’t hopeful and there are significant problems that we are facing. Yet even if we don’t fix them, life has a way of working out. I am not saying that we shouldn’t address climate change or any of our big issues. I am doing what I can right now to address that. I am simply saying that if we are hell-bent on human extinction then great. We don’t seem to have the wisdom to want to live as a species, so if the collective will is to die then I guess we are going to die. I will die with a smile on my face knowing that I always did everything I could to make the world a better place. Does this make me a Klingon? Today is a good day to die?
No matter what happens in the future, look for helpful ways that we can improve life for everyone.