Weekend-Engagement #269: Optimistic or pessimistic? Which are you and why? Give examples.

Park fountain

Without a doubt I am a pessimist until a certain point in my life I was more or less balanced between pessimism and optimism then unfortunately life decided to hit me hard and since then I’ve always ended up expecting the worst case scenario in various situations. There were two triggering factors that turned me toward the dark side of thinking the first was when I had to undergo surgery it was supposed to be a quick and 100 percent resolutive procedure but instead nothing they even called me crazy because it wasn't supposed to have gone wrong but I was right and they told me "let’s do a second one this will fix it" and again nothing and then the third and then the fourth every time it was supposed to be the definitive and final one but instead I still have lingering effects and I’ll carry them with me forever.

The other event which happened at the same time was when my wife got pregnant and her work contract was about to expire everyone was optimistic that it would be renewed to make the company look good since they were happy with her work anyway and instead nothing surprise we ended up with only one salary and a baby on the way...

Park tree

Now my motto is "better to be ready for the worst than expect the best", which means that when there’s a potential problem ahead or some uncertain outcome I always tend to think it won’t go well and this in turn pushes me to look for a plan B for when things go wrong and be ready for any eventuality.

Tortoises fighting for food

For example when my son had his last fever it was right before Easter the pediatrician as usual said it was the flu and nothing was needed now seeing that we had four holiday days ahead where the pediatrician would be unavailable and the only alternative would be the emergency room with hours of waiting I already predicted that it could get worse so I asked to have the antibiotic in advance (obviously not to be given randomly but under certain circumstances and dosages): and just the night before Easter he had a 40°C fever that wouldn’t go down even with paracetamol in fact it was rising luckily I already had the antibiotic and was able to give it to him right away and he started to feel better the next day but can you imagine bringing a child with a 40°C plus fever to an overcrowded emergency room?

Another example at work on some projects there is a guarantee that certain software specifications from other suppliers will always be respected now where I work we don’t save lives but it’s a field where if problems arise things become quite unpleasant and can cost hundreds of thousands of euros I always assume something will happen out of spec some issue and to avoid trouble I always plan for the handling of every possible error... and sure enough problems often do happen.

Again my wife’s first permanent job at some point started putting her on furlough it was supposed to be temporary just for a few months but it didn’t sit right with me and I had a bad feeling about the future so I started preparing backup jobs and looking for some extra income so we wouldn’t get caught unprepared and in the end what happened? The company went bankrupt and she lost her job and luckily I had found something else in the meantime!

In short there are many examples, maybe I’m wrong to be like this? Maybe, but no one is perfect.

PS: trying @commentrewarder for the first time

Random photos taken this weekend at the park
Post in response to @galenkp Weekend-Engagement topics: WEEK269