Eternal Optimist

Being an eter­nal opti­mist does not mean that you are a Pollyanna putting pos­i­tive spin to all dis­as­ters. It means that you will see any dis­as­ter through to some sort of res­ur­rec­tion. The human record is dis­mal. Sev­eral hun­dred mil­lion were killed in var­i­ous wars in the last cen­tury — the one that was sup­posed to be the begin­ning of the great mil­len­nium — the open­ing era of some great utopia. A few more human “suc­cesses” like that cen­tury and we are all done for.

The eter­nal opti­mist mea­sures suc­cess by great leaps of time, but lives each moment as if it had already come true. The mis­eries of “now” are expe­ri­enced in heav­enly light. There is a higher ratio­nal­ity to the irra­tional­ity of this or any other incom­pre­hen­si­ble era. The “God above rea­son” con­tin­ues to be seen in humankind’s great­est mis­takes. The final great era (if there is one on earth) is not the result of human aspi­ra­tions but the com­ing to fruition of the inten­tions of the Creator.

In the mean time, it makes no sense to jump on promis­ing band­wag­ons ded­i­cated to per­sonal or insti­tu­tional egos, nor is there room for the crit­i­cal, cyn­i­cal, or neg­a­tive voice. Admit­ting what is in the moment is the first step to great­ness. Affir­ma­tion leads to hope. It is no acci­dent that neg­a­tiv­ity is iden­ti­fied as the core char­ac­ter frame in so many dis­eases. It is the dynamic that even­tu­ally eats itself up. Beware of the critic — espe­cially if it lives inside of you.

I still go with the eval­u­a­tion of the Cre­ator in Gen­e­sis — that it is all good. Human­ity may be botch­ing all sorts of oppor­tu­ni­ties, but you can­not fault the cre­ation. Affirm it. Learn to imi­tate it in love and be one with it. What­ever is going on in the big­ger pic­ture is ulti­mately good. We humans have to admit our poor stew­ard­ship of life and not blame it on God. The final vision of hope in the Apoc­a­lypse is the Cre­ator clean­ing up the human mess…trashcan and all. In the mean time, look around. There is a lot of heaven going on. Eter­nal opti­mists see it everywhere.