Optimism as a choice (#955)

My outlook on life is based on several personal and few not so personal factors. I have decent health, I have family and friends who I treasure and the world as a whole is working it's way toward something special. There are many things to be hopeful and optimistic about. Of course there are troubles and disappointments and real fears about the immediate and long-term future but all of that is manageable. There is no real threat in my mind to make me feel pessimistic about what could be a great future. Logic, with reason and analysis, have come to be the basis for most of our society's thinking about our future and that is well and good. Now I know there are forces that would discount logic, with it's attributes, in favor of less than progressive ideals but those forces have the weight of history and modernization to succumb and the prospects of that happening are dim. Again, this thinking of mine may be attributed to me being optimistic but regardless, I do believe the majority of us are on the same forward-looking plane. What has always been, in our past, the vision for our future has it's foundation in principles of betterment for our species. Never before has the successful goal of any society on Earth been to deny knowledge and science as a means to structure society. We have and always will be about who we were and who we will be. Our natures demand this from us. The very thought of anything less than a determined instinct to know all that is about us is unthinkable. It takes optimism to look at something new with a wonder about how it came to being. It takes optimism to learn about each other and understand our differences in ways that are similar to all of us. It takes optimism to forge our futures with strength and hope for a better world for our nest generations. We are the species that sees with our eyes, hearts and minds the possible where no possible existed before. It takes optimism as a choice to be who we really are and who are yet to be.