The Resigned Optimist: A Paradox of Inevitability

I’m intrigued by paradox. I’m more or less convinced that we’re surrounded by senselessness and contradiction: life is paradox. I can’t say for sure if that’s an objective senselessness or purely subjective senselessness, because all I have is my subjective observation. But what I observe is this: humanity is constantly confused and contradictory. For example, what we do in the name of God. The paradox of faith: we can transcend petty humanity and incarnate Love. And yet we can also justify horrible exclusions (slavery, segregation), we can celebrate genocide (Joshua, Judges), and we can explore and embrace child sacrifice (is that not what God did on the cross, but feed his own child to the maw of humanity to appease our endless sin?). In one emotional second we can navigate both love and hate. We experience jealousy even while speaking genuine joy in others’ accomplishments. I could argue that paradox, rather than making life obfuscating and impossible, actually makes life rich and complicated. Or, I suppose, I could argue that there is therefore no such thing as paradox, because two things that are opposite almost always seem to find a home together, in some move a cosmic balance.

So, too, is my experience with optimism and resignation.

I am an optimist. I have taken Strengthsfinders, as any good Western, impericallly-driven businessperson or student or pastor or human being has, and “Postitivity” is one of my strengths. This is not particularly surprising to anyone who knows me. I tend to believe in the best. I tend to hope for the best. I tend to expect the best. Because what is the point of hope if it is less than? What is the point of love if it is untrue? (Incidentally, this is vastly different than perfectionism, which requires one’s self to be the best, rather than a more macro/situational view that conveniently avoids fusing expectancy with responsibility for the expected result.)

And yet my experience of life, of humanity, of love and hate and safety and fear is that it is not the best. God seems to have come to grips with this “less than” living, and responded in extreme measure (the cross). Solomon (or whoever, I’m not so dogmatic on authorship to really care) dallies around that point, wallowing in Ecclesiastes around depression, resignation, and the general ennui of carrying the fullest measure of human wisdom and wealth. So if then life itself is destined to be flawed, to fall short of some goal, and if God himself surrendered his son in resignation and grief, then the inevitable end of optimism is that same experience: resignation and grief. 

For the optimist then, whose hindsight is always disappointment, the future remains hope and potential that will, with seeming inevitability, end in resignation and cynicism as a flawed present is experienced in persistent repetition.  The future is potential. The past is disaster. It’s this paradox that I live in: I wish I could give up on hope. Without hope, there is no hopelessness. Without the impossible potential of the future, the past moves from disappointment to realism: past, present, future; all simply are. 

Similarly, I think, the curse of nostalgia (exaltation of the past) is pessimism, for it is impossible to experience a present that is as pure as the (false) idealized past. If the present is insufficient, then the primary promise of the future is disappointment. 

So what? I don’t know. We’re all screwed. Everything balances eventually, and none of it well: optimism and resignation, nostalgia and pessimism, or the monotone experience of a past, present, and future that simply is, which is void of hope. And yet here I am, unable to give up on hope. I know its cost. I know its inevitability. And I stand with my hands up, bracing against the great steamroller of life hoping, praying, and believing (help me in my unbelief) that the other end of death is resurrection.