Practicality of Pessimism

“I never knew you would turn out like this, those days you use to talk about practicality and crap” my friend kept saying these words as I was lamenting my losses in life. I argued back saying I am still optimist and also practical but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t take away the pessimist overtone from my voice. This makes me wonder – is optimism all about illusion. Is it true that when you are sad and hurt, if you alleviate above the realm of reality and cover yourself in cloud of happiness people calls you an optimist while if you moot over the reality and prepare yourself for the worse you are a pessimist?

For me reality is always what I want to be in. I do not mind mooting over it again and again, however one thing, which I always keep trying, is to change the reality by being a part of it. In that effort there is hope and that hope is what I call optimism. As of today there are few things that are beyond my control, few partially while rest fully in my control. For the one beyond I would try and bring it in at least partial control else would try to dissociate with it ASAP, for things in control I would keep thinking on it, question myself, try to improvise, analyze it so that I can make it happen. In this process I might tend to lower the expectation of a favorable outcome simply because experimenting with the facts clears the uncertainty around the event and probabilities of the outcome can be deterministic and hence more discrete with less assumptions and chances of exaggeration. Does that make me an optimist, practical person or pessimist? I would never know that nor would my friend and frankly it doesn’t matter for next day I have to get up and clear the mess anyways and move on in life and again come across a situation where I could question myself with the same question, after all till we keep having heavy meals we need heavy conversations to follow suit J