Should I Be Less Pessimistic or Should You Be More Realistic?

For example, if I were to say, "The United States economy is only going to get worse until finally the country is in complete shambles" and someone were to reply, "Stop being so pessimistic!", where is the line drawn between pessimistic and realistic?


The truth is that pessimism is an emotion. It's only a choice in that when something bad happens, you can be pessimistic about it, or you can completely ignore reality and be optimistic.


Being optimistic when you know you or everyone else is in a bad place feels dishonest to me. Pessimism allows us to address and deal with issues in life.


And like I said before, pessimism is an emotion. When bad things happen to people, they get sad. They get depressed. And when you're standing at a funeral and half of the people around you are bawling their eyes out, you don't say "Stop being so sad!" Do you?


I do realize that some people can be overly-pessimistic. Some people overreact and blow things out of proportion.


But you have to realize, being realistic is efficient and would help so many people in this world. I know this is a lot more complex than I make it sound, but think of all of the over-weight people in the United States. If some of them came to grips with reality and said "Okay, I need to eat less. I don't really need to eat all of this food." Or some of the people that max out 5 credit cards. If they said "Maybe I don't need to buy these things." Their problems would be solved.


I think pessimism is so discouraged that some people have lost their sense of right and wrong.


And I say it doesn't matter how you look at a glass. If your glass is half full, great, I'm glad, but stop and think next time before you tell someone not to be so pessimistic. You never know how low their glass really is.