Article December 31, 2007 Issue

Solid ground for optimism

BY ROBERT BULLOCK

SOME ONLINE FRIENDS and I were chatting in a recent environmental discussion group, when one person posed a question and asked for a yes or no vote: "Are you optimistic about the future?" Most said that they were optimistic, and the vote was overwhelmingly in support of that view.

In order to participate fully and honestly in the discussion, I thought I needed to give the subject some careful thought. I started by reckoning that I didn't fully understand what the term optimism meant. I knew only what it signified in general—having a more positive outlook on life, possessing confidence that everything will work out well. I looked in an early version of Webster's Dictionary and found a wonderfully descriptive definition: "The opinion or doctrine that everything in nature, being the work of God, is ordered for the best, or that the ordering of things in the universe is such as to produce the highest good."

I was encouraged to see that this definition moves the concept of optimism away from a limited, material, positive outlook to one built upon spiritual understanding.