Is 'optimism' enough?

Short answer: No. It's a good start, but it's not the whole story. We have to make space for the ugly & uncomfortable parts.

I used to teach positive psychology (along with many other specialty topics) at a state university and then again at a private college. I quit due to workplace bullying, low pay and a few other things. One of them was, what I was learning from real people vs what I was learning about my industry. Read the pages of The Professor is Out to learn more about that can of worms for that industry.

I am not alone in this opinion piece sentiment either. The world has changed. So must we.

Optimism, positivity, grit, resilience, and a strengths-based approach are all fine and good when sitting in your summer home, overlooking the bright lights of the city below. The theory is, "it's important to be equipped with these tools" when living in the world.

This idea of being IN the world of the people you are going to work with is not new. Cultural and social anthropologists do it all the time.

In case you haven't heard, people from all walks of life are calling on the 'leaders' ~ motivational speakers ~ influencers ~ inspirational rhetoric oracles to do and BE more.

Practical, solution-focused, evidence-based DO something ideas. Broad-based saying the same thing as everyone else is not helpful.

Have you ever set up a tent made of the woods around you, at the bottom of that mountain, hoping to make it through the night with no food, no bathroom, and no way to heat yourself other than the clothes you have left? Have you ever done that with the profound grief that each and every houseless person lives with while battling demons and condescending helping professionals? People looking up at the lights from the beautiful homes above, where their fates are being decided while the 'experts' say,

"They have to take some accountability for their lives" without any effort to know what circumstances lead them to that place below.

When I drive past the houseless people in my city, who are often living in very dangerous, sparse conditions, the very last thing I'm going to do is say, "Well, at least someone in an agency told them how to develop resilience. They'll be fine now."

Before you say, 'that doesn't happen' ~ yeah. It does. I've heard it myself. I've watched in agency meetings as people condescend to the needs of the vulnerable. And for forks' sake, stop calling them, 'needy'. They are not.

If anything, they are holding on to the only thing they have left. Their dignity. Which is the first thing agencies will try to strip them of, if they ask for help.

It's easy to be compassionate enough about human kind to want to study grit. It is a noble cause. There's no dispute there. Eventually, that research will trickle down into not-for-profit agencies or schools where the tools of grit will be discussed.

It will help.

To a certain extent.

The look on the faces of the parents with their three young children on the corner outside the Trader Joes after they were evicted, with the youngest being no older than two, and the eldest, being around five years old, sitting on their only remaining belongings in bundled old suitcases. I think about who here in their million dollar home will say to them, "Be sure to look forward to tomorrow" when in the moment, the family are trying to survive minute to minute.

Of course it's important to acknowledge optimism. The part that people are not talking about?

Reality.

The grief and fear that entwine around you as a parent, knowing those children are in imminent danger.

Then the fury at my peers in the industry, knowing that they have no idea how much the sadness wraps itself around your entire vision in a tunnel, making it nearly impossible to figure out what to do next.

To truly help? I mean, actually put your money where your theoretical resilience sits?

Get out of your Tesla, hand them $100 which will give them enough to go into the Trader Joes to buy those kids some food. Don't just write a check to a not-for-profit that will eventually trickle down to $75 of it (generously speaking) will make it onto a Walmart gift card. So that you can "prove" how they spend the money.

Better yet, buy them a night in a hotel, since the temperature will be below 30 degrees.

You say you're optimistic?

Are you? When was the last time you checked? Are you optimistic or are you putting on that persona so others will think better of you?

What do I mean?

"I'm an optimist" ~

That's what the bank manager said to the woman who was wearing her cleaning clothes, after three months of healing from a major illness. Three months were she fell behind on her bills. Everyone in the community Facebook page, 'oh, go to so-in-so, she's great! She'll help. She's so positive.". She was positive and optimistic. For people with money. For those without? Her entire demeanor changed.

What can you do?

Step forward when that woman has to humble herself to the sharp dressed manager who sits on a desk, arms cross, judgement worn on her suit jacket, as she looks down on the woman, explaining in an eighth grade lecturing tone, that the woman should have taken better care of her credit score. Step forward to the 'tone' that manager used to lecture a woman who was clearly embarrassed.

Say something.

Stand up for the older man counting coins to buy milk while on line in the local grocery store, when the person with the full grocery cart behind him is tisking at how slow he is.

Optimism is great.

Optimism in action is better.

No person in the history of ever who is actually suffering, needs to be told to be resilient.

You might as well tell an upset woman to 'calm down'.

• No child in third grade who is hungry on the weekends needs a teaching staff to tell them how to have grit when all they want is discretion.
• No mother who is grieving the loss of a partner needs to be told how to have resilience as a trade off for being helped in an agency when what she needed was to have the state help her with her heat bill. The lecture is unwelcome.

The condescending tone is unwelcome.

The obvious does not need to be said out loud by a brand new licensed counselor or social worker.

No $800,000,000 government grant will be able to teach a $100,000 per speaking event motivational speaker how to FEEL the concrete compassion that people who are suffering how to feel better.

1. Empathy is free, but it has to be understood from the inside out.
2. Compassion is free, but it has to be felt from the soul to the soup on the table. Seed to table style.
3. Optimism is an empty prayer when served cold of any actual knowledge of what people need.

We can't TEACH the reality of what people are living with right now, then tell them to not talk about it out loud.

Society is judging people, then acting as if it's not a thing. Gaslighting people or shaming them for the hardship. That is a thing that happens all the time.

A leader can't preach optimism if they aren't also prepared to be genuine.

A leader can't lead, if they are unwilling to also follow.

A leader is not informed without also sitting in the metaphorical kitchen of the lowest paid employee, asking them genuinely about their lives.

And yet, we do it all the time. We SEE it all the time.

Workplace bullying is at an all time high.

In an age of mass lay-off's or record corporate and not-for-profit profits, the lowest paid people are one ... ONE ... paycheck away from losing everything.

People are being told to either take the abuse or leave.

They are witnessing the news (maybe even participating in it); trying their best to separate people by class, race, age, location, culture. They are doing it to make it more malleable for causing more harm, rather than helping.

Optimism is great, but not without reality.

The reality is, a great deal of what we're living with right now are two separate worlds.

Those who have, but believe they are the authority of the have-nots.

Those who have not, but believe they are not enough to ever step into a 'have' space. They only think that because they've been told or treated as such their entire lives.

Note to Faculty:

IF you are teaching anyone to work with people, assign them one entire semester to a houseless shelter, or a DV shelter, to a 12-step group, or some other place where the conversations are hard and real.

Then, require them to lose the 'tone' of being superior to their fellow humans.

Some people get that. Others never will.

KH

Thanks for reading.

I'm not anti-optimist or negative, or even against grit, resilience or a strengths based approach to life. On the contrary, I'm all of those things. I'm also a survivor. I'm also someone who realizes that we need more. We need to add to it for it to be relevant in today's world.

Note to the reader: When I responded with a much shorter version of this on one of Simon Sinek's posts about International Optimists Day, there were several comments that either corrected me, or tried to explain what optimism meant. To whomever it may concern, no woman in the history of ever needs to be told by a man what something means, when she is in fact, a former faculty member who taught that thing. And yet, here we are. Circling back and closing the loop.

#988 for all who hasn't heard lately that you are not alone. You're not. It just feels that way. The world just sucks right now. Tomorrow ... one step forward. Then another step after that. That's optimism in today's world.