By Alyssa Velazquez
Elm Staff Writer
Pessimism: the twenty-first century black plague. As we wake up everyday to a bright sun and cold morning air and see the dew on the stems of the foliage, so too do we pry ourselves out of our own inner worlds to face the outside sphere of pessimism.
One aspect that no one really addresses when it comes to pessimism, however, is that it leaves room for nothing else. Completely devouring all emotions and interactions, pessimism shuts the door in the face of any foreign idea and feeling. Every idea and individual must go through a lie detector, full body scan, and background check. When all that is said and done, the foreigner is still escorted to the door, and all you’re left with is your pessimism.
By far the easiest aspect of our everyday lives to become a certified pessimist in is relationships and love. The blows and failures sometimes fall so hard that rather than rising to get back up again, we stay on the floor seething, developing misconstrued ideas about the whole society rather than realizing it was just one person who did this to you or I, not the entire human race.
This past weekend, I had scheduled an academic meeting. One in which the said academic advisor was to assist me in the paperwork associated with my plans after graduation. The meeting was vey much like a first date: neither one of us really knew the other and we had been set up by a mutual associate due to the compatibility of my potential future and their qualifications. It all looked good on paper, and that’s as far as it went. As soon as I sat down I was politely informed that I was not only an unlikely candidate for the scholarships, I was not even qualified to be inquiring into those post-bachelor degree programs. I sat there mute, nodding my head, hoping that in moving my head I would be keeping my brain preoccupied and stop any of the whelming tears in my eyes from streaming down my face. I sat in that condition for forty-five minutes, and after that meeting I was left with my thoughts, thoughts that turned to anger in the continued determination that not even the Washington campus would see me cry. I went home after that. I needed to get away, to escape this “reality” that made everything I had worked for, everything I had been motivated to do, seem pointless.
My family was waiting for me, despite the fact that they had no idea what had happened. They made me a cup of café con leche, boiled tea, fed me fried banana French toast, slipped in a few Jesus talks, and even bought me a homemade pumpkin sundae; and although all these decadent desserts were extremely restorative to my depressed and unresponsive condition, it was their love that helped the most.
In relationships, no matter how much we degrade men, women, love, sex, everything relationships entail, we can’t help wanting them. This wanting mixed with horrible meetings and dates develops inner pessimism to the institution. Just as that advisor made me pessimistic about higher education. True, the advisor had not sugar-coated it, and I didn’t want them to. But they didn’t need to knock me down in order for me to look at the applications rationally.
In all actuality, what makes a pessimist a pessimist is someone who knows that a particular ideal, way of life, belief, or establishment exists but has never been able to attain said belief, way of living, or ideal for themselves. I know love exists, I felt it unconditionally for three days. I also know that pessimism will only ever keep us blocked into a restrictive set of parameters while optimism will, without a doubt, bring us face-to-face with the worst of things, it will also never be remiss in introducing us to the best of things, or at least a homemade pumpkin sundae.