‘Why are all my blessings disguised as such horrible disasters?’
Sharing a coffee from a broken cup in a rat infested kitchen we pondered this question. One of us has shingles, the other has an essay due in for which she’s headed for a fail on a colossal level.
We are masters of the silver lining. Silver linings on every cloud, no matter how huge, dark and leaking with big horrible cold raindrops. Silver lining none the less.
When my friend said ‘the shingles is back’. I said: ‘damn’. Then she said: ‘At least I don’t have to do my presentation.’ I said: ‘fan-bloody-tastic’, and she said: ‘I know right.’
Praise God for giving her a horrible disease, because it means she can veg out for a week watching South Park in bed, Heaven.
Being an optimist can be a bit of a curse sometimes. The cup is always half full, even when only dregs remain in said cup. And sometimes, the ‘at least I still…’ added to ease the blow of every unfortunate event borders on ridiculous.
Two nights without sleep, preluding a trip to Bristol, featuring a dropping of one’s phone in the toilet, combined with an extortionate train fee after losing one’s ticket.
Most people would remark:
‘God this is f*cking sh*t.’
Not the eternal optimist though, she buys a coffee, remarking: ‘At least I haven’t lost my debit card yet’ and congratulates herself on owning said phone for a record of 3 months, only smashing it once in this time.
No I didn’t have insurance, and no I won’t dwell on it, because it’s a scam anyway. And ‘At least I can use my old phone in the meantime’, it’s just a shame I’ve lost all my pictures but ‘the others probably took better ones anyway!’
In fact it says a lot that after dropping the phone I stood and laughed for a few mins, instead of diving into my own piss to potentially save the thing, or having a tactical cry to ease the pain afterwards. I thought of the hilarious story it might eventually make and sucked it up.
Instead of thinking ‘damn I paid for this phone myself, that’s a few hundred of my own precious pounds lying in that dirty water’ I thought: ‘well at least I bought it myself, that means no one can tell me off for breaking it’. Which, on reflection, is a bit weird.
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When my laptop broke, I had little silver lining to console myself with, so I relied on the ‘oh well, I still have my health’ rhetoric, like those plucky wartime Londoners from 1950s Blitz films. When it was fixed for free, rather than being relieved I was utterly elated, believing myself unbelievably lucky in every sense.
When it comes to boys, any hint at rejection is met with ‘gay or girlfriend’ because the inflated sense of self-worth of the optimist disallows said rejection from being anything to do with us. And actually, this is quite a liberating way of life. Neither of us are knocked particularly hard by heartbreak because we have a hell of a sense of humour about it.
‘He didn’t text back’ isn’t met with ‘oh babe, what a dick’, its met with ‘he must have been so excited he fainted!’
Because the ‘He’s just not that into you’ rhetoric doesn’t help anyone much. I’d rather nod with aggressive wilful ignorance when my Mum tells me ‘boys are just intimidated’- Why the hell not?
Though at times, I wonder where the line will be drawn. Will we be on our death beds laughing saying ‘Well at least I don’t have to clean the bloody house ever again’, or on the streets following crippling debt, saying ‘at least I don’t have to walk far to town anymore’?
You never know.
Jokes aside though- now is about the best time to be the eternal optimist in life. The world is our oyster, we’ve got plenty of time to worry about things later, when we’re old, and when our worries constitute something a little bit more legit than not perfecting an essay.
So when life gives you lemons… when it chucks them at you with almighty force- don’t be downcast- make yourself a giant jug of Tom Collins and bleedin’ well get on with it. ‘At least you’ve got your youth!’