Is Optimism Always a Good Thing?

You know how when you ask people how their holiday was and they say it was good? Well, I didn’t. I wasn’t trying to complain or anything. I just like to be honest.

My back was hurting for 3 weeks, which means I did very little over the break. The worst part was that I couldn’t play tennis. It may sound extreme to some people, but my mental health was severely compromised. I tried to practice gratitude, patience, self-compassion, and all that, but the truth is, without tennis, life hardly seems worth living.

That’s why I spent 2 and 1/2 weeks in denial about how bad my back was hurting. Which means I tried to play 3 times. The tennis sucked and I wasn’t able to move at all. I couldn’t even swing. The last 2 times actually made my back worse.

Why would I continue to try to play, knowing that I couldn’t move? Knowing that it might slow my recovery down? Because I was so determined to get better that I was completely out of touch with reality. I was almost delusional.

Sometimes I beat myself up over this. Many of my relationships have failed because of this same delusional optimism. I’ve relapsed into depression because I was unrealistic about how much I could take on. I’ve wasted countless hours trying to fix some mistake in my knitting rather than cutting my losses and ripping the thing out. (Unless you knit, you probably don’t appreciate how obsessive this is, but it is a serious waste of time.)

But at the same time, my optimism is what allows me to enjoy tennis, even when I lose badly. It’s why listening to people’s problems all day doesn’t get me down. It’s why I’ve been able to knit dresses.

Plus, even if it’s unrealistic, unbridled optimism can give us something to look forward to. Like, even if the chance of winning the jackpot is 1 in a billion, isn’t it fun to imagine what you would do with the money? To debate whether you would take the payout and calculate how much you’d have after taxes or whether you’d spread the payments out over 20 years?

I’ve actually been thinking about buying lottery tickets because the indoor facility where we play in the winter has closed, and without tennis I really do get depressed. So I fantasize about winning the lottery and building a facility, where I would build it, how many courts it would have, whether I would also have outdoor courts. Maybe I’ll even include a pro shop. Then I could buy cute tennis outfits wholesale and save some money. Not that I would need to save money since I would have won the lottery.

Do you see how much more enjoyable this obsession is rather than thinking about how I am going to be depressed and out of shape without tennis? Even if I don’t get to play, either way. And really, what’s a couple of dollars every week if it keeps hope alive?

Plus, someone has to win the lottery. So someone’s optimism paid off. Why can’t it be me?