Welcome to The Pause. Come on in and make yourself comfortable.
Before we get going today, a quick celebration for The Pause.
Today’s issue marks our 24th meeting together, which, at two meetings per month, means we’ve been at this for an entire year.
I have loved getting to develop and explore this space with you, and I hope you’ve loved our meetings and being a part of the development process just as much.
As a fun side note: The first issue was sent on April 6th, 2021 to five of you who believed in me and my general idea enough to sign up (shout out to Sammy, Lucy, Timbo, Frisco, and KMac). As I’m pressing send on today’s issue, we’re rolling 140 deep.
These numbers are more than what I imagined for the first year given The Pause is discoverable mostly through word-of-mouth (and maybe a LinkedIn post, too). Watching this project grow and bloom in an organic, old-school way is really fun, and I’m grateful to have a front seat. Thank you for contributing to that magic.
And with that, I’ll take you into the good stuff: a moment dedicated purely to optimism.
Settle in, take a deep breath, and get ready to pause in 3...2...1...
🌬A Breath of Fresh Air
Earlier this week, I was lying in bed, doing my best to check something off my to-do list by finishing my latest read, The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
It was that point in the night where my eyes were getting blurry and I was re-reading the same sentence over and over again, but, for my own stubborn reasons, I still wouldn’t put the book away. As I turned the page, I was met with the title for Chapter 17:
The Seduction of Pessimism
Well, doesn’t that sound nice and light.
I decided to keep reading.
For some quick context, The Psychology of Money explores 19 short stories about the strange ways people think about money. This chapter was exploring one of those stories, but, the contents hit different:
Forecasts of outrageous optimism—are rarely taken as seriously as prophets of doom. Take Japan in the late 1940s. The nation was gutted by defeat from WWII in every way — economically, industrially, culturally, socially. A brutal winter in 1946 caused a famine that limited food to less than 800 calories per person per day.
Imagine if a Japanese academic had written a newspaper article during this time that said:
“Chin up everyone. Within our lifetime our economy will grow to almost 15 times the size it was before the end of the war. Our life expectancy will nearly double. Our stock market will produce returns like any country in history has rarely seen. We will go more than 40 years without ever seeing unemployment top 6%. We will become a world leader in electronic innovation and corporate managerial systems. Before long we will be so rich that we will own some of the most prized real estate in the United States. Americans, by the way, will be our closest ally and will try to copy our economic insights.”
They would have been summarily laughed out of the room and asked to seek a medical evaluation.
Keep in mind the description above is *what actually happened* in Japan in the generation after the war.
With the constant highlighting of pain, death, hurt, destruction, and demise, it’s easy for optimism to get lost in the mix — almost like Waldo — you know it’s there, but you just can’t seem to find it.
What I appreciate so deeply about this passage is the unexpected reminder that it is just as valid a choice to feel optimistic about the future as it is to feel doom-and-gloom about it.
Optimism in a world of pessimism can feel like taking a breath of fresh air — an act of resistance of sorts against the current of content that makes us feel more stressed, scared, and in pain.
Optimism can be about believing, deep down, that the possibilities of life get better over time and are in our favor, even when we take a few steps back along the way. It can be about having faith that ourselves and our world will shift towards caring over indifference. Understanding over judgment. Real-life love over online likes.
When I think about it, the majority of people in my actual — IRL — life wake up trying to do better. To love better. To be better. And that, I have to believe, adds up to something.
So, does this mean we need to believe everything is going to be great along the way?
Of course not.
Life is a beast sometimes.
But, I do think it’s worth considering what the effect of choosing to be more optimistic could do for us and our lives.
⏸ Pause & Reconnect
**Get curious. Be kind. There are no right or wrong answers; just what’s true for you.**
Use this definition of optimism: hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.
What’s something you’re optimistic about?
What’s something you’d like to see through an optimistic lens?
When you think about your life, do you feel hopeful and confident about the future? If not, why not (and, if you’re comfortable, would you want to change it)?
**Note: Go ahead and share your answers on this one. It’ll be fun to celebrate what we’re optimistic about.
I hope you enter whatever you’re doing next feeling optimistic about what’s to come and keep that feeling rolling for as long as you can.
Until next time (…year two, we’re comin’ for you).
🖤, L
Hi friends! Welcome to the comments of this issue. Enjoy my answers, share your own, or lovingly lurk away. 🖤
**What’s something you’re optimistic about?
Our ability to create online spaces that nurture humans and respect the biological necessity to be present in our real lives.
**What’s something you’d like to see through an optimistic lens?
Our country's ability to be kind and understanding of one another.
**When you think about your life, do you feel hopeful and confident about the future? If not, why not (and, if you’re comfortable, would you want to change it)?
I really do, but I weirdly feel uncomfortable sharing this sometimes. Some strange mix of feeling like people view having hope as being naive and feeling like the world places more value on pessimism because it sounds "smarter."