I have had to turn into an optimist if only to survive. Even during this ass-biting cold snap I found myself commenting to others on Sunday, day two of the cold, that it seemed to be getting warmer. They responded in the gentle and patronizing manner that one uses to help keep the mentally disturbed calm till they go back on their meds. Well, it was maybe one or two degrees warmer than Saturday when the mercury remained stubbornly in the minus digits, but mind you, minus only two, and maybe for five or ten minutes it might have been a balmy minus one. See what I mean? It was still cold, and doing unspeakable things to my skin and making it necessary not only to crank up the heat to the max in my little apartment and thus doing my share of amping out our city's power grid, but making it almost impossible for me to feel warm anywhere. Sleeping under two extra blankets has helped.
On the other hand I find myself every day feeling thankful and expressing thanks to God that I have a warm place to live, a comfy bed to sleep in and extra blankets to keep me warm in my own apartment on cold nights. This is not by any stretch a perfect arrangement. I have a neighbour upstairs who can stomp around like a buffalo stampede, and this is a concrete building, but cheaply constructed (social housing you know) without noise insulation and she has been stomping manically around for the last half hour and it is now only a little after 7 am. I have just emailed the building manager in the hope that he will intervene but also that this does nothing to harm my neighbour's tenancy since she is a good person despite the noise. I am wearing earplugs, the radio is up a bit louder and the situation now feels a bit better than tolerable.
Yes, I'm an optimist. This is what gets me through the night. It has got me through many dark nights. Without hope we perish and I think I didn't become seriously mentally ill until I lost all hope for my life and became for a while suicidal. But hope isn't something that you can manufacture for others. It has to be generated from within. Which is not to turn into a Pollyanna but to base our optimism in reality and also our reality in optimism.
I have long enjoyed having a gallows humour which has not suffered one bit from the optimism, as my frequent readers (I do have frequent readers, yes?) will already have noted. I remember one individual especially who hated my humour. I must have been but twenty-five at the time and had already survived a few circles of hell so it was inevitable that I would acquire a sick sense of humour if only to survive and make life a bit easier. Following an evening church service several of us went out for coffee. I noticed that three of our company were each wearing sweaters that made them look like a particular vegetable: pumpkin orange, tomato red, and eggplant purple, so I laughed about it and called them the vegetable patch. They enjoyed the humour, were laughing then one objectionable little man in our midst, seated actually just across from me almost jabbed his forefinger in my face and began to rabidly yell at me that I was cynical. A frightening and disagreeable experience and soon no one was laughing or even smiling. What a sad, miserable little man.
Well, it is going to be maybe two degrees warmer today, and another degree warmer tomorrow, then the temperature rises to nine and it will be raining for five days. It won't be cold and sunny but mild and rainy. A reasonable trade off this, and everyone is going to lament, "but my isn't it miserable?"
To me, misery is as misery does. The rain always makes the air sweet and it won't be cold. I am confident that my building manager will talk to my neighbour about her loud foot noise and maybe even offer her support if she is particularly anxious about things this early in the morning. And I am confident that the earplugs will make things tolerable just as they help me sleep at night.
Christmas is coming. Time to make happy. That's it, folks, grit your teeth and smile.
Optimist, right?
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