The Optimism Problem

I spent some time at a family friend’s a couple of months back. In the two days I was there, they didn’t have electric power at all. Whenever I asked them what the problem with their power supply was, they’d say that it never used to be like that, that though their power supply wasn’t constant, it wasn’t so bad either. “Don’t worry…” they’ll say, “…power will be restored before you know it.” And so it went on for two full days till I left — the bulbs didn’t blink — not once. As I left their home, I told them that the reason for the power outage was likely to be a major fault and that I didn’t think they’d have any power for another four days. They laughed and joked and threw gibes and rolled on the floor. “You don’t live in this area. If you did, you’d know how stable our power is.” was their response to my candid assessment given what I had observed in the two days I was there.

Anyway, we decided to have a bet — they put their money on the power being restored before nightfall that day, I put my money on four days. Two days later, they called me to tell me that the power had been restored. None of us won the bet.

As I went over the situation in my mind, I couldn’t help being impressed with their optimism. Even in the face of clear odds against their position, they still remained aggressively positive that whatever the problem was, it couldn’t be so bad. They used their analysis of past events in the locality to ‘predict’ the future without giving a lot of credence to the ‘present reality.’ They also, largely ignored the signs that perhaps something could’ve gone wrong to alter the path of the sum of all their past experiences. But don’t we all do it?

The Danger of Positive Thinking

From the economic and political situations of our countries to the prospects of a new job offer over our existing job, we all like to be positive and tell ourselves that what is coming can only be better than what we currently have. At worst, things are likely going to remain the same. Looking at events from a distance, it is quite interesting to note that many times, the limits of our optimism is often clearer to the outside eye. It is like the view of the outline of a mountain against the horizon — a view you can only see when you are not the one standing on top of that mountain. It is the pitfall, majority, if not all of us fall into — the bias that we are likely to suffer from when we are viewing something that closely connects with our emotions and somehow we are not in a position to see the reality of our situation.

A good example of this alternating mountain view is in the case of an impending war. Before war breaks out in a locality, there would be a lot of preceding events leading up to that war. Perhaps X and Y have been assassinated. Perhaps A & B have formed alliances. Perhaps J & K have been bombed and S & T have been blockaded. Up until the point where it is impossible to avoid the war, local citizens go about their daily businesses (as much as is allowable at every point in time) and somehow, when an outsider raises concerns, they are likely going to give the same reasons my family friends gave — “You don’t live in this area. If you did, you’d know how stable our [power] is — you can substitute ‘power’ with any word from ‘country’ to ‘job’.” They cluster around radios and listen to the news, taking in all of the information that reflect their current realities but only few respond radically to the possibility that in the passage of time, they may be casualties of that ‘impending’ situation around then without any option of escape. While I admit that war is a sensitive subject for those who have lived through it and leaving one’s job or emigrating to greener pastures may not be an easy choice to make for many, an outside view nonetheless may just be what is needed to give one the more ‘realistic’ picture upon which to base one’s decisions. As much as optimism keeps us alive in dire times and plays an important part in our lives, it is also critical to know that optimism is an unwilling ally that ties us too closely to our emotions in the times that we desperately need to get away from it in order to make quick and sound decisions.

While neither of us won the bet, my friends later got to know that the power problem was central and that it affected a lot of people and they were lucky it was resolved in the short time frame in which it was resolved.

I was happy for them but I was also quick to send a quick note to self to train myself to trust the outside ear whenever the drumbeats was mine and trust the the outside eye whenever I was the one standing on the mountain.

Osundolire Ifelanwa

Life observer, writer