I’ll try not to make this sound like a pitch from a former-smoker, noisily cough hinting at the bus stop in an effort to deter strangers from blackening their lungs. But if I was to say, what I’m about to say, to my former self, they would’ve covered me in their bright green vomit, disgusted by the mere suggestion of choosing ‘Optimism’.

Like the glamorous smokers of Lauren Bacall and Bette Davies, there is a certain seductiveness in the philosophical outlook of pessimism. Its easy fence-sitting is coupled with its simplicity. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens, it’s all shit anyway’ is a mantra for the miserable drone-worker whittling their three-score and ten away at the grindstone. It also acts as a panacea for all those nylon pink tracksuits wearing positivists with bleach-white teeth and copies of The Secret poking out their hemp ‘save the planet’ totes.

The deception of The Nihilist is that they think their perspective is correct because it’s miserable. ‘The News is all miserable, life is meaningless ergo…’ all that jazz. Over time the reaction to pain and misery only validates this certainty that everything is shit.

Alas, that’s bollocks! As bollocky as the overtly positive, a constant and immovable perspective is just silly. I say this only to free the miserable into a much more comfortable mode of existence. This mode is that of The Optimist. The Optimist doesn’t discount the misery, but it also doesn’t blind itself with overwhelming (and unattainable) positivity. From The Nihilist outreach, you may think it foolhardy and even more of a fence-sitting perspective, but, hear me out. The Optimist is an endangered species. In an age where extremes are commonplace, where binaries are clung to like totems of greater understanding, it is a revolutionary act to be optimistic. And it’s a stronger motivator than Pessimism or Positivism.

Take, for instance, the Climate Crisis. We have about 11 years now to avert global catastrophe. The Nihilist says ‘there is nothing we can do, it’s all over’, The Positivist will say ‘It’ll all sort itself out, live in the moment’, but the Optimist will say ‘We could avert a Climate Crisis if targets that scientists have laid out are followed’, The Optimist is rather more articulate than the blanket statements of N and P. The Optimist is a critical thinker, one that uses their own initiative and doesn’t rely on an emotional consensus. Optimism is political, philosophical and spiritual. It’s the idea of being told the world is ending today but still planting seeds for tomorrow. We are fed misery and helplessness in the form Nihilism to make us inactive, to stop us challenging, changing or growing. It feeds commerce, greed, and spiteful selfishness. To litter is pessimistic, to recycle is optimistic.

Ultimately is a question of personality. The Nihilists only befriend other Nihilists, and they are all the more miserable for it. Positivists befriend other Positivists, sharing rictus smiles on Instagram and denying ‘toxic people’ their Valhalla whilst tears form in their pained wide-eyes, knowing if they slip into natural human emotion they too will be banished. The Optimist is friends to both sides of the imagined binary as well as all the variances in-between.

So, next time you react with extreme vigor to the news of a delayed bus or a friend’s wedding, just remember you too could choose to be optimistic about it, rather than some artificial, fast-food emotion the modern world has foisted upon you.