The Optimist’s Playbook
Something to Look Forward To
By Eric R. McQuiston
My adult son came by for a visit recently. Somewhere in the course of our conversation, he began talking about the state of the world, the direction society is heading, and what the future might hold. The more he talked, the more discouraged he became. Eventually, he admitted something that troubled me. He was afraid of the future. Not just concerned about it. Afraid. He saw little reason to be hopeful.
That bothered me. Here was a young man with most of his life ahead of him, looking toward tomorrow with dread. And here I am, approaching 61, having seen my share of life’s disappointments, upheavals, and general nonsense, still looking forward to what comes next. What’s wrong with this picture?
Now, I’m not blind to what’s happening in the world. I read the news. I see the political circus, the wars, the economic uncertainty, the technological upheaval, and all the other things competing for our attention and anxiety. Some days I shake my head and wonder what on earth we’re doing to ourselves.
But I’ve always been an optimist. Not because I believe everything will turn out wonderfully. It might not. Humanity has demonstrated a remarkable ability to make a mess of things, often with considerable enthusiasm. Still, I remain optimistic. Why? Well, I’ve been thinking about that.
The World May Go Down the Toilet. We Don’t Have To.
One of the things I told my son was that we have remarkably little control over what happens in the world. Unless you’re planning to become a president, a philosopher, a business titan, or perhaps the next great revolutionary, chances are you’re not going to dramatically alter the course of human civilization. And even those people often discover that the world has a mind of its own.
But we do have influence. We have our families, our friends, our neighbors, our communities, and the people we encounter every day. We have our work, our interests, our talents, and our choices. We can make those things better. The world may go down the toilet, but that doesn’t mean we have to climb in and pull the handle.
There’s an important difference between being aware of the world’s problems and allowing those problems to consume your life. We can spend every waking moment worrying about what might happen tomorrow, or we can do something worthwhile today. I prefer the latter.
A Little Faith
There’s another reason I’m an optimist, and it’s a deeply personal one. I believe in God.
Now, before anyone starts expecting a sermon, relax. I’m not particularly interested in telling anyone what they must believe. I don’t claim to know exactly who or what God is. I don’t pretend to understand the mechanics of creation or the mysteries of existence. Frankly, the more I learn about the universe, the more I realize how little I understand. But I believe there is something greater than ourselves. Call it faith, intuition, or that persistent feeling that there’s more going on than we can possibly comprehend.
When I look at the natural world, I see order. Consider a leaf. A plant. The movement of water through a watershed. The geology beneath our feet. The atmosphere, the oceans, the planets, and the stars. Everything operates within an extraordinary framework of relationships and natural laws. Even the things we call chaotic exist within that framework. Science helps us understand how much of it works. It doesn’t necessarily answer why there is a universe in which any of it works at all. To me, that underlying order suggests something greater.
If I were going to create a universe, I imagine I’d begin by establishing some rules. Gravity would probably be useful. Chemistry seems like a good idea. Perhaps a few billion galaxies to keep things interesting. Then I’d let things unfold.
Of course, that raises all sorts of theological questions, some of which would probably get me politely escorted out of Sunday school. I’ve occasionally wondered whether our understanding of good and evil is far too limited to describe the nature of God. If God created everything, including beings capable of both extraordinary goodness and terrible cruelty, what does that tell us about creation? I don’t know, and I’m comfortable saying so.
Whatever the nature of God, I believe we have been given the freedom to choose what we contribute to this world. And those choices matter.
Faith, to me, doesn’t require having all the answers. It allows me to continue when the answers aren’t available.
Faith gives us the courage to face an uncertain future. Optimism allows us to see its possibilities. Service gives us something worthwhile to do with the life we’ve been given.
That’s about as close as I can come to explaining it.
Choose Wisely
I sometimes imagine God as a father speaking to his children: “I gave you a good thing. Life, the world, and everything in it. Choose wisely what you do with yourself and this world.” Not a command. Not a threat. A gift, accompanied by responsibility.
We can build or destroy. Create or consume. Help or harm. We can spend our lives contributing something worthwhile or devote ourselves entirely to our own appetites. The choice is ours.
I once heard a wonderful sermon built around Bob Dylan’s song Gotta Serve Somebody. The message was simple. Whatever our station in life, whatever our accomplishments or ambitions, we all serve someone or something. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s power. Maybe it’s ourselves. Maybe it’s our family, our community, or God. But we serve something, and what we choose to serve matters.
For me, service isn’t necessarily about grand gestures or heroic accomplishments. Often it’s found in the ordinary things we do for one another: helping a neighbor, teaching someone a skill, creating something useful, caring for the natural world, offering encouragement when someone needs it. We may not change the world, but we can certainly change someone’s world.
The Trouble With Knowing Too Much
There’s a saying that ignorance is bliss. I’ve often thought about that while watching a dog greet its owner. The dog doesn’t know whether the economy is heading into recession. He isn’t concerned about artificial intelligence replacing jobs or the possibility of another war. He may die tomorrow, but he’s not spending today worrying about his mortality. His human just came home. Life is wonderful!
There’s something enviable about that.
Human beings, on the other hand, have been blessed—or perhaps burdened—with the ability to contemplate our own existence. We know we’re going to die. We know the people we love will die. We can imagine disasters that haven’t happened, anticipate suffering that may never occur, and worry ourselves sick over things entirely beyond our control.
I’ve always found the biblical story of the Garden of Eden fascinating in this regard. The forbidden fruit came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Before that, innocence. Afterward, awareness, shame, responsibility, and mortality. There are many theological interpretations of that story, but I’ve long wondered whether it also speaks to the burden of human consciousness. We know too much to live like the happy dog.
But knowing what might happen tomorrow doesn’t mean we have to surrender today. Knowledge allows us to recognize danger. Faith allows us to live with uncertainty. And optimism allows us to recognize that uncertainty also contains possibility.
The Bow and the Arrow
My father introduced me to many things, among them a love of the written word. He particularly admired Kahlil Gibran, whose writings I devoured when I was younger. One passage from The Prophet, titled On Children, has remained with me throughout my life. Gibran reminds us that our children are not possessions. They come into the world through us, but their lives belong to them. They have their own thoughts, their own paths, and their own futures. He describes parents as bows from which their children, like living arrows, are sent forth. I’ve always loved that image.
As parents, we can offer guidance, encouragement, love, and the benefit of whatever wisdom we’ve managed to accumulate along the way. But we cannot live our children’s lives for them, nor should we try. We lead. We do not force.
Perhaps that principle extends well beyond parenthood. We can offer an example. We can share our experiences. We can introduce possibilities. But ultimately, other people must choose their own direction. There’s a tremendous amount of faith involved in that. We invest ourselves in futures we cannot control and may never see. A teacher may never know what becomes of a student. A person planting a tree may never sit beneath its mature canopy. A parent cannot know where a child’s life will lead. Yet we teach, plant, nurture, and encourage anyway. To me, that’s hope. It’s optimism put into action.
A Volkswagen, Some Headlights, and a Jigsaw
Which brings me back to my son. As our conversation continued, I didn’t try to convince him that the world was wonderful or that everything would work out. I couldn’t promise him that, and he wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
Instead, we started talking about things he might enjoy doing. He’s bright, creative, and capable, but like many people, he’s been struggling to find something that gives him a sense of direction.
I’ve come to believe that having something to do isn’t necessarily the same as having something worth doing. We all need something that gives us a reason to get up in the morning, something that engages our curiosity, challenges our abilities, or allows us to contribute something of ourselves.
We talked about recycling old computers and electronics, about salvaging useful components, repairing equipment, and perhaps turning discarded technology into something valuable. That led to another interest of mine: recycling plastics into useful products. Then woodworking. Furniture. Concrete tables. Artificial rocks. All sorts of things that could be designed, built, repaired, or repurposed.
Before long, he was talking about building a cat house shaped like an old Volkswagen van. Apparently, the cats need a vintage camper. And apparently, the camper needs working headlights; that was his wife’s contribution to the design specifications. Suddenly, he’s thinking about battery-powered LEDs, wiring circuits, learning some basic electronics, and sketching designs. We talked about books, too: a science-fiction series he’d introduced me to, which I’d recently enjoyed, and a few others he was considering reading. By the time he left, the conversation had changed considerably.
Later that evening, he sent me a text. He was excited about the books. He was thinking about his designs. He was planning to learn how to wire those headlights. He had things he wanted to do.
Now, I don’t pretend that an afternoon of conversation solved all his concerns about the future. The world hasn’t changed. The problems are still there. But something had shifted. Instead of dwelling entirely on what might happen to him, he was thinking about what he might do.
And I think that’s important. We can’t always change our circumstances. We can’t control the future. We certainly can’t make the world behave itself. But we can create something. Learn something. Help someone. Discover something new. We can give ourselves a reason to look forward to tomorrow.
The Optimist’s Playbook
So, after all this philosophical wandering, what’s my great advice for living in an uncertain world? I suppose it comes down to a few simple things.
Have faith in something greater than yourself, whatever form that takes for you. Recognize that the world is bigger than your worries, and that you don’t have to solve every problem in it. Choose carefully what you devote your life to. Find ways to serve others. Stay curious. Make things. Learn things. Plant things. Fix things. And when the world seems particularly bleak, turn off the news for a while and go do something worthwhile.
None of this guarantees happiness. Life will still deliver its share of disappointments, grief, and unpleasant surprises. And sometimes despair runs deeper than a change of perspective can remedy. But worrying about every possible misfortune won’t prevent those things from happening. It may only rob us of the good things happening right now.
I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know whether humanity will eventually get its act together or continue making a spectacular mess of things. I believe there’s a larger order to existence, even if I can’t begin to understand the whole of it. And I believe that what we choose to do with the life we’ve been given matters.
My son, meanwhile, is working on plans for a Volkswagen-shaped cat house with functioning headlights. There’s a jigsaw arriving Thursday.
It won’t save the world.
But it’s something to look forward to.
~ Eric
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