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Trust does not necessarily mean entrusting someone else with something, or relying upon them.
Trust in a person is acceptance of that person.

Trust in the sense of relying upon the integrity of another is also not weakness.
Placing no trust in another is a weakness -- for if you do not trust, then no trust will be reciprocated.

I would ask you to define a situation in which trust makes you weaker, and thus, more vulnerable.

Until I have compelling evidence to believe otherwise, my previous statements pertaining to trust still stand.


-Alezunde

Forgive me, I haven't read the rest of this thread... I'm only commenting on the first post. Therefore, what I have to say may already have been said many times over. I apologize if it has been.

I agree with you 100%. I'm also an optimist, and as such I can clearly see where you're coming from. First of all, your definitions and subsequent explanations of 'cynics', 'pessimists' and 'realists' seem to be totally congruent with my own interpretations, and your personal definition of optimism makes more sense to me than the dictionary definition does, too.

Cynics get themselves stuck in self-fulfilling prophecies. If they look at everything scornfully, how can they ever be happy with anything? How can they ever receive anything good if everything, both good or bad, is viewd with skepticism and mistrust? And as for pessimists, sure! They're not disappointed, because they were expecting the worst anyways. But once again, nothing good ever happens because they can't see it as good; rather, they see it as bad-waiting-to-happen. Realists, like you said, aren't so bad; they can at least acknowledge the good when it appears in front of them. But it seems to me that realists fail to take advantage of the more subtle goods that occur, believing that they're negative.

Optimists, on the other hand, see everything in a positive light. This doesn't mean that they're always happy, and it doesn't mean that they're going to be disappointed at every turn. It means, as you said, that no matter what happens, they can see some good in it. Even failures become positive things because optimists can take the failure as a lesson and use it to their advantage to avoid similar failures in the future. I was actually just having a conversation about this earlier today over dinner with my friends. Optimists take failure as a tool for improvement of the self, and when one looks at life that way, one can accomplish so much.

In effect, I've merely restated all the things you said in your post. I suppose I just wanted to say that I agree with you fully.

AislinCade:
Thanks for your input!
My main motivation behind posting this topic was to point out why optimism is not only a good aesthetic choice, but a good choice logically and practically as well.

I would tend to call you more of an optimist than anything else. smile
I too prefer to be able to view things in an objective light, from as neutral a stance as possible -- I think that it's hard to obtain facts otherwise.
My desire to see things objectively doesn't prevent me from being an optimist though.
I don't have the time and energy to waste on being down -- I have my life to live!
I by no means claim that life is always an easy or fun ride! xd

-Alezunde

As I stated in my initial post, my opinion is that the brand of optimism I prefer is probably the ultimate form of realism -- still practical, but optimistic.

In my life I've realized that a lot of the worst things that have ever happened to me have been the most beneficial to my personal growth, so I can completely relate to your experience. 3nodding

In trusting others more readily, I hope to promote trust in others -- so that maybe someday you can walk up to a random person on the street and befriend them, if only for a moment. (Rather than be met by their suspicious stare and hasty escape.)

I agree completely.
It seems to me that everything bad has some sort of downward trend associated with it. : /
It's really up to us to realize when this sort of thing is happening to us, and actively prevent it from happening.
There's the catch: living a happy life is full of effort -- it's all about fighting the downward trends. However, I think that it's quite worth the effort in the end.

There's a story I heard once, that I think probably has some relevance to the discussion, and it went more or less like this:

There was once a young man who suffered from the problems of life.
The problems were so out of his control, that he finally sook out the wise man who lived by the lake with the willows.
He approached the old man, and lamented.
The old man said "Put your hand in the water of the lake, and make ripples."
The young man did as he was told, and ripples spread out across the lake.
"Now stop the ripples with your hand" said the old man.
Putting his hand in the water only caused more ripples, and the young man could not stop any of them with his hand.

There was a little bit more to the story, but the general point is conveyed.


-Alezunde

It may be true that no one here is an optimist in the traditional sense- because we try to come at problems from an objective angle and then apply the positive twist.

However, I disagree. Just because there's bad out there doesn't mean you have to just accept it, as you claim. I think we can look at the bad and see what is there to be improved, as opposed to simply accepting it as it is.

In almost any situation, aim for the best possible outcome, and if you don't make it, look at the good in what you have. Nothing is purely bad, everything has some positive aspect, so don't view things that way.

This isn't a matter of ignoring the bad as much as it's a matter of having a positive attitude and perspective about things- even the bad things.

Did any of us say to deny that anything bad exists or can happen? No.

An optimist doesn't deny that there are bad things out there, he merely tries to improve bad things so they are good things.