When I finally grew tired of sliding down the 4-foot blue slide that sat at the end of the playground in front of my suburban home, I focused my play time toward a more adventurous route, as I began digging through the wood mulch that covered the park grounds like a dog frantically digging up the ground in search of a bone. My expectations were beyond the moon, like any five year old. Lost treasures. A capsule of forgotten secrets. A map that could lead me to the ends of the world. The further I went, the more unrealistic the predictions became. But when my cold hands reached the bottom, there was only black. A black tarp that seemed to extend beneath the perimeter of the playing field, buried under wood pulp. Of course, this wasn't the first time my optimism was dashed. In fact, as the days go by, my optimism seems to grow, with the disappointments that come with it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Optimism is considered one of the best things you can have. As Jurriaan Kamp describes it, “It is our choice to accept the rain and look beyond it to the coming sun. We create pessimism by focusing on the bad. At the same time, we create optimism by focusing on the good. And as we'll see, optimism is a much more rewarding strategy. Kamp's praise of optimism is, at best, honestly optimistic. Because while putting on your best attitude and walking out the door telling yourself there's a silver lining to every situation you might encounter seems like an ideal way to live, it's almost impossible to make it a reality. Over the past eighteen years, I have tried to find even crumbs of value or content in my darkest days, but ultimately found it impossible. Although Kamp calls optimism rewarding, I can hardly consider it a thing. such. When my optimism led me to believe that I would definitely find or gain something by digging through the pulpwood of the playground, the only thing I received were lines of dirt between my fingernails and a reprimand from my mother. Maybe the more my optimism lets me down, the more I start to distrust myself. By constantly waiting for a positive solution or a happier alternative, we just seem to put ourselves at greater risk of disappointment. But don't be fooled. Just because I discourage constant optimism doesn't mean I find pessimism better. We should not live thinking one way or another. we should not always seek good or always evil. In fact, you don't have to look for anything. When an unfortunate situation arises, we must accept it and become familiar with unpleasant emotions, because it is something that we all have to face at one time or another. Likewise, when something good happens, we should just be happy and live in the moment. Because life is not a way of thinking, it is a series of events both good and bad, and looking at them in a different way certainly won't change anything. Looking back on my early mischief, I also wonder why I started digging in the first place. Instead of going to another park or doing another activity together, why did I start looking for something? This seems to be a tendency that we humans seem to have. Always looking for things that might not even exist. Meaning. Aim. Answers. God. Why do we get carried away with ideas and questions without concrete solutions,.