There's people who view everything very optimistically, and there's many spiritual messages that encourage you to think only positive thoughts. This is what known as "seeing the world through rose-colored glasses". Even mainstream society often encourages it as some kind of solution to what is wrong with the world. It's not a real solution though, as more often than not it just encourages a person to ignore what really needs to change.
One of the big problems that comes from the rose-colored glasses is that you actually miss out on the real beauty of existence. All the "positivity" is often just the mind's rejection of what it perceives as negative, so the person with rose-colored glasses is just as caught up in their mind as a pessimistic person. If you just focus upon your mind's interpretation of what is, you're really missing out, you're only seeing through your mind's filters. A small child, they don't interpret everything as positive or negative, and because of that they can really see the wonder of Creation.
Optimism and pessimism, they're really just two sides of the same coin, dualism. Someone caught up within duality has to interpret everything as either good or bad, and rose-colored glasses just feed into this illusion. That which is judged as "bad" is often ignored completely, the optimist tries to pretend like it doesn't exist. This isn't a recipe for change at all it really just keeps things exactly the way they are.
One of the other big issues with the "rose-colored glasses" is that it can destroy empathy and compassion. If another person is in a "bad place", you can't really acknowledge what another is feeling if you only see the "positive". So many parts of the world are in a very ugly state, and pretending like this doesn't exist isn't going to fix anything. This stuff needs to be acknowledged first before it can be healed. For many people, this is going to cause sadness and that's okay. Acknowledge what you're feeling, take responsibility for it, and then work to release it. Seek to change that which doesn't really serve you anymore, don't just mask the problem through "positivity".
There were researchers studying optimism and pessimism, and they decided to perform an experiment on two little girls. They told each that they would be taken to a room where they'd get to play with a pony. The first girl, an enormous pessimist, was taken to a room with a pony in it, and immediately she started crying. The researchers asked her why, and she responded, "You're just going to take it away from me". The next girl, an enormous optimist, was taken to a different room, one filled wall to wall with horse manure. Upon seeing this, she gets an enormous grin on her face, and immediately starts digging through all the shit. When the researchers asked her why, she yelled, "I just know there's a pony in here somewhere!"
The example was a joke, by the way, don't take it too seriously. There is a bit of truth here though, as it shows how optimists and pessimists are both disconnected from the reality of the situation. They didn't view what is, only what they want to see.
The Galactic Free Press
No copyright, share/edit freely
