(I'm just apologizing in advance for any traces of teenage whininess or existentialistic moanings & groanings in this post. I think I'm basically feeling kind of down on myself and need some cheering up, heh... no better place to find it than positive Objectivist forums. )

I've always, always had a very positive outlook on life. I think the first time I started becoming acutely aware of it was when I was 11 or 12 - just this unquestionable certainty that life was full of promises in the future, that great things lay ahead for me. Obviously reading Rand for the first time was like walking into a mirror, and only solidified everything.

So I'm extremely optimistic -- but almost excessively so. I think I can do absolutely friggin everything, and so I'm really, utterly SHOCKED whenever I fail at something or fall below my own expectations - get a B or a C on a test or don't place in a competition when I'd worked so hard at it and PLANNED on winning or when a person doesn't turn out the way I thought they were or what-have-you. It stuns me every time because I never even CONSIDERED the prospect of failure, and, wham, there it is, staring me in the face and contradicting everything I'd believed in before of myself. So that makes me question the certainty I had of myself beforehand.

Which makes me question the certainty I have now of life in general - that I'm going to have the opportunity to excel in my career, that I'm going to meet that perfect someone - that very specific someone - and fall in love and be happy forever and have lots of friends and live in a beautiful house with high ceilings and lots of windows and light and music and books, much of the last two my own. A part of me wonders if this is a sort of faith. Which is horrifying.

So, after all of this, my question is, simply, to the adults: so how is it, really? How is life after several years in the "real world?" Is it everything you thought it would be? Does it live up to your expectations?

Or should I just give up now and check out early because the disappointment will be too much to take? (Nothing morbid about that!)

Elizabeth,

I don't want to sound sappy, but I would not give up a single moment of the life I have lived. I have known a great deal of heartache and suffering and joy and triumph. I learned one day that I was an alcoholic and I was just as amazed as you are when you fail. And then I beat it. I had to do it the hard way—the real hard way. After I beat it, I had to become a hardcore drug addict. But I beat that sucker, too. Grimly, but I beat it.

I have been horribly immoral and I have been more moral than most of the moral people I know. I have not lived in the middle. My place has been at the ends. I used to have a page in my personal scribbles book that said, "If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space." That has been my motto. I walk just as easily among Governors and Kings and high-end achievers as I do among the ghetto dwellers and the homeless. I have something for them all and I can talk their language. Hell, I even walk well with preachers.

Now I am starting to settle a little. You get tired. Frankly, I am sick of literally having my bones busted up or getting cut to pieces and sewed back together. Physical therapy is a HUGE pain in the giggy. And I am tired of telling influential people "I can do that," then going off studying like the Dickens to make sure I know how to do it after I opened the door and got the gig. I already know how to do a lot of things. The bitch of it is that, despite that, I am still undertaking new projects that require new learning. I do it all the time. I am my own worst enemy for that one.

I feel good, though. I am starting to be what I have lived. I feel like I am starting to have a history—a real history—a colorful one. But I am at a stage of life where I thought I would have already made my mark on mankind. Yet I see that I have that part in front of me—if I live long enough and create the masterpieces I know I can create. At least now I have the living needed to make sure those masterpieces are masterpieces—if I can get it right. And I will. I know I will.

I have had a totally unique life and I am glad I have lived it so far. I have loved and I have hated. I had to wait to my 50's to find the one woman who was made for me. All I can say is, "That was one wait that was worth it." Life certainly didn't work out the way I imagined when I was young. Nope. Not in anything. Not in career, not in love, not in kids, not in body, not even in the country where I lived most of it. But it has been one hell of a ride so far and it is only getting better.

I foresee one hell of a ride for you, too, Elizabeth. My advice is take it to the end of the line. At any rate, it's the only ride you've got, so you might as well soak up the scenery and piss off a lot of people on the way. Be hard to love, girl. That way you will get the good stuff when it comes. It sure is a lovely ride full of adventure if you want it and if you've got the grit.

Michael

If it's been easy for you up until now, it may actually be harder later on, because you may not have developed habits of perseverance, and that can be a handicap. Train yourself as well as you can by taking on tough challenges that require patience and self-starting, because no one will push you later.

Things aren't going to fall into your lap; it will be up to you to build the bridges to the places where you want to go. It's quite prosaic, actually; if you want that house, you have to make the plans for how to afford it. In the arts, I wouldn't begin to advise you on career issues. Regarding finding the special someone, the only advice I can offer is to meet tons and tons and tons of people; unless you're planning to fall in love with the UPS man, love isn't going to come knocking at your door.

Judith

It's called rational egoism for a reason. If you want to do something well you should take the steps to make sure you can do it.

Success in life is never guaranteed, of course. However, a general attitude of positive expectancy -- the belief that good things are around the corner, that you are capable of achieving your dreams and worthy of the rewards -- tremendously augments the likelihood of success. It will allow you to be aware of opportunities all around you, and to transform life's challenges into opportunities.

Pessimism and optimism tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies about the future. So keep that positive outlook!

Jeff; To quote My Fair Lady "I think you've got it."

I'd put it this way: You should strive to reach the point where your realism is optimism.

MSK's injunction to "be hard to love" is a profound one. Consider Lillian Gish:



All I'll say is that this girl never married--and a case could be made for the idea that she never even had sex. (Though that seems unlikely, I admit, and not just because of her beauty.) She was extremely "hard to love." For details, see the biographies by her and others.

Mine has, lived up to expectations, but with a number of differences from the specifics of what I expected when I was your age. Life can produce tragedies which weren't anticipated. For instance, I went through a difficult time in the mid-early '70s with the suicides of two of my brothers (I was the oldest of six; there were two younger sisters and three younger brothers) followed in close succession by the deaths of my mother, my father, and an especially treasured friend (she'd been my high school English teacher for two years; we became good friends after I'd graduated from high school). Plus I was overworked because of a short-staffed situation on my editing job. Plus my early relationship with Larry had its hassles. We weren't always as thoroughly happy together as we've been for now many years. In sum, that stretch of my life was nothing short of an ordeal. Which isn't to say that it was unrelievably grim. There was joy also; for one thing, I loved my job. And there were very good times as well as hard times in my relationship with Larry.

My point in recounting this is to give an honest answer that there could indeed be "curves in the road" ahead which you don't anticipate and which can try your commitment to happiness to the utmost. There aren't any guarantees of a smooth sail. Indeed, I think that the number of people whose life course has always been borne on a balmy breeze is small to vanishing. The vast majority of people encounter some form of difficult passages however positive their attitude and fortunate their circumstances.

Something I can say with certainty about you, though, based on the writing you've posted to this list, is that you have the verbal skills to achieve renown as a writer if you want to pursue your current desire to write. Judging from the way you talk about music, I suspect that you have the goods there as well. And you sound to me like someone who has the drive and the grit to go along with the ability. I won't be surprised, if I'm still alive long enough, to hear that you're becoming someone famous.

One piece of advice I'll offer to you, advice difficult to implement: Always try to know what you really want; always try to guide your life by your own truest sense of your own deepest desire. One of the things I agree with Objectivism about is that doing what one wants -- what one really wants, from one's own deepest reality -- is a difficult accomplishment. If you can keep true to your own soul, I think that whatever sorrows you face ahead you'll be able to say long years from now -- as I can say looking back on my own life to date -- that you're glad for what you've lived, that despite the sorrows you have no regrets, that you would do it all the same if offered "a second chance."

Ellen

___

One of my favorite movies is The Natural. This bit of dialogue in the spirit of the previous posting. Iris Gaines: "You know, I believe we have two lives." Roy Hobbs: "How, what do you mean?" Iris Gaines: "The life we learn with and the life we live with after that." This little dialogue shows that we don't always know how things will turn out but they may still turn out well.

Failure is part of living. You learn from it and you toughen up. One needs to learn how to deal with adversity or you will be knocked down someday and won't know how to get up. Courage is the essential ingredient. If you learn how to deal with the small things that go bad the big ones will be easier. Integrity goes hand in hand with all this--doing the right thing. You also need to honor your optimism, embrace it; it's part of you.

--Brant

Nathaniel Branden mantra: "What's good today? What needs done?"

(My) Kat has an unbelievable amount of life experience, things you wouldn't believe. The way she looks at it is simple. More or less she says you have the choice every day-- is that glass half-empty or half-full? Well, it's both. Sometimes it looks like 3/4 empty. One way or the other, you're going to choose to look at what is, or what is not. If you don't make that decision, it will be decided for you. It's a compelling case for optimism. It certainly can't hurt as much as heavy pessimissm- that makes itself known pretty quickly, and it's never to your favor.

The thing is, the reality of this situation becomes more and more apparent as things progress. The problems increase, the joy increases.

I wouldn't even call what E has optimism. It's more confidence. If I were to be asked if you could have too much of either I would say yes, it's called being self-deceptive or delusional. I think the difference between confidence and optimism is that confidence is about yourself, optimism is about everything else. I find that I tend to fall on the confident and pessimistic side. I think that, in general, this promotes a good amount of independence so it works for me. This isn't to say you couldn't be independent otherwise.

Elizabeth -

Some time has elapsed since you opened this thread....and I hope you have found the various good advices offered useful. I read and re-read your dilemma several times and it did take me back to my own late teens...when I experienced a shattering realisation that one of my own confidences was not well grounded. I thought and asked the same questions you just have, and just blundered on when no answers came.
The classic quote is "If I knew then what I know now" ..... but would I have done things differently? Yes, probably. It is about remaining positive and trusting your intuition. As Ellen says, Always try to know what you truly want. Back then I did not know what I truly wanted - no one had asked me, and I hadn't asked myself. If there is one thing I would change back then based on what I know now it would be this....so
Know yourself and know what you truly want - not wishes, but wants - write them down and also do the ecology checks. What will change if my wants become realities? Are the outcomes well formed? Do they stand up to my values and beliefs?
The World will serve up good stuff, and bad stuff, and a lot in between. How you react to that is totally within your control and will therefore determine your view of your Life as it unfolds day by day. Adapt and learn is the cycle.
Learn from the past - Plan for the future - but live in the Now. Once I started doing that it all changed for me.

So, such a thing as too much optimism? It relates to our own individual view of the world - so we control how much rose-tint there is in our spectacles. Too much or too little - the choice is ours and ours alone.

You are a unique, positive and confident person....if you ever needed reminding of that!!

You may care to read 'Learned Optimism' by Martin Seligman. He includes a 'cheat-proof' optimist test and so you could test to see how optimistic you are.

He's one of the Positive Psychology researchers - studying what simple actions people can take on a day-to-day basis that are most likely to lead to happiness.

A friend highly recommended the book to me. According to Seligman, optimists are far more likely to succeed in life than pessimists and they're much happier. There are no guarantees, of course, but you are raising your odds.

I've found that if I don't get the grades or similar that I was hoping for, the surest way for me to succeed in the future is to figure out where I went wrong and learn from my mistakes. Bemoaning the harshness of the world and being a drama queen about it never helped me

I can tell you that having once been an extreme pessimist to now being a 'moderate optimist' (according to the test); life sure is more fun with an optimist's slant on the world.

Fran thanks for the reminder about Martin Seligman. Bells rang at the mention of his name, but I didn't make the connection until I looked him up and there was the reference to MAPP which I first encountered a couple of years ago. It aided me in a late-life career change and the help there for my daughter when she felt her career was floundering was considerable. Where intuition needs backing it was very useful.
Of course intuition and confidence should go hand in hand.....but do pessimists trust their intuition....mmm?