Do you feel that? Something different between your friends and family, even from just a few months ago? Noticing your attitude and mind feels cloudy and more judgmental than usual?   

Allow me to introduce you to our epidemic of pessimism.   

As a disease continues to ravage an exhausted country, the public mood seems to have soured considerably. 

Pandemic fatigue shows its side effects considerably, and the most significant contributing factor to our collective bad attitudes – pessimism.   

We have heard plenty about mental health in the past 11 months; seeing the words on a screen reminds me of a borage of corporate feel-goodery our minds have had to endure for too many months. Our minds are in utter duress at best and completely broken at worst.   

This fact is clear to all of us. We all are desiring one collective win, a feeling of elation and completion of a terrible time, but we often are too cynical about embracing the little victories along the way to our major triumph into a society we recognize as home.  Our epidemic of pessimism is evident in something as trivial as the Super Bowl halftime show. 

Instead of celebrating the performance of a talented singer like The Weeknd, who clearly cared enough about the performance to spend his own money due to NFL budget cuts, and the fact that there is a halftime show at a Super Bowl of any quality at all in the middle of a pandemic, the internet did what it does best – criticized and compared. In an event that may be the single most beloved spectacle in American culture and celebrating it accordingly, we manage to choose to be unhappy about its quality. It seems that we almost make the choice to be unhappy, allbeit without most of our intent.

To feel any sort of win again, we have to embrace the ones we get. Please meet and welcome my friend – relentless optimism.   

Do you remember what it felt like to be optimistic? I think it might have been a long time since many of us felt genuinely optimistic. Relentless optimism would like to remind you of what the future holds and the greatness you might be looking over in front of you. It may be difficult to find any silver lining out of a year like 2020, but it’s the relentless optimism that will ensure you confidence that the future will be better. If not because of your circumstances, then because of your attitude. This is most of the battle.   

Seasons will continue to change. Summer will come, both literally and figuratively. Just thinking about thinking positively is exciting, isn’t it?  

Debunk those negative thoughts with some relentless optimism, and let’s see if we can start feeling like ourselves again.