Through My Eyes

Knowing My Luck… the Fine Balance Between Pessimism and Optimism

“Knowing my luck” is something I say far more often than I feel comfortable doing so. It shows an unhealthy amount of pessimism, and I don’t want that in my life.

I suppose I’m Alanis Morrisette’s song, Ironic, personified in some respects.

Fearing the worst in every situation is a bad habit for many and can prevent you from living a fulfilling life. While I certainly do not maintain a negative outlook all of the time, that does creep in quite a bit and when I was running with my partner yesterday, I found myself saying something that made me feel uncomfortable. We were chatting about something really mundane and not even that important. I remarked, “Knowing my luck… x will happen.” Luckily, I clocked it, and I managed to adjust my words and feel better about it. However, it got me thinking about that fine balance between pessimism and optimism. I don’t think I have the equilibrium quite right just yet.

Optimism

“It’ll be reet” (or reyt) is something I say frequently. When my partner worries about completing and handing in a uni assignment, supportively, I tell him that. If one of my daughters has fallen out with a friend over something really trivial, I say that to her. If it starts raining, just as we are heading out on the school run, those are the words I use. It’s a typical Yorkshire saying and means that everything will work out just fine.

So, as you can see, I do have it in me to be optimistic. However, not always or as often as I probably should be.

Pessimism

“Knowing my luck”, as I explained before, is something I say frequently along with “knowing our luck” as together, my partner and I have encountered our fair share of rough times since the beginning of our relationship just under four years ago.

In December. we headed off to Brighton for a few days to celebrate Colin’s birthday. It’s been ages since we spent time away and I wanted to make it special for him, especially considering what’s happened over the past couple of years. Two things happened which annoyed us: the hairdryer in the hotel stopped working and they were unable to replace it, despite the receptionist saying something to the contrary (this happened just before we were heading out for his birthday meal and I had to throw my hair up into half a French plait combined with a pony), and the hotel restaurant took over ten minutes to bring over a small ramekin of ketchup for the food, which was almost devoured before it arrived.

We both expressed that a perfect break would never be right for us as “knowing our luck”, things will always go wrong. Although we laughed about it, that attitude does reveal a lot about how we are programmed.

A Fine Balance

We don’t make resolutions and certainly haven’t for 2022, but we are both trying to be more positive about life without straying into toxic posivitity territory, which could be potentially as damaging as constant negativity.

Life is not perfect. I know of not a single person who professes their life to be that way, and if they did, I likely wouldn’t believe them. Bad things happen to good people (I now have the newly discovered by me Lottery Winners in my head!). It’s true. It doesn’t matter how virtuous you are, sometimes things happen beyond our control that shake our worlds or, at the other end of the scale, mildly irritate us (like the ketchup and hairdryer).

Showing gratitude for the things we do have in our lives rather than worrying about the parts that are missing is probably one of the biggest attitude changes we need to continue to make. It’s understandable that we can feel desperately sad when we miss out on achieving something or things don’t go our way. However, it does not mean that we can’t focus on what already exists, what brings us joy and what will remain ours.

So, I’m attempting to throw “knowing my luck” and “knowing our luck” into the bin, never to return. It’s overly optimistic of me to think like that and perhaps pessimistic of me to type this. Ah well… we will try our best! Wish us luck.

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