Choosing Optimism

Years ago, while trying to help me when I was down in the dumps, a dear friend said to me, “It’s just as easy to choose optimism as to choose pessimism.” It wasn’t until she said that that it dawned on me that I could choose.

I am attempting to choose optimism for our election. I see cracks in the negative forces, but I am afraid to let up. Not that I have much control over it, but worry seems to be prescribed. I am driven by optimism, I guess you could say. I was also raised to believe there is good in every person— I admit its hard keep that belief in mind sometimes. But I do; I think that some people are just the way they are because of circumstances, and perhaps brain chemistry that is not their fault. No one is “evil.”

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Recommendation time! I listened to the New Yorker Radio Hour just now, and David Remnick interviews the philosopher Judith Butler. It’s really good, she talks in ways that are understandable even though someone complex. I also recommend Butler’s book, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, a groundbreaking treatise on gender identification, written in 1990. She has a new book out called Who’s Afraid of Gender? which she says she decided to write after speaking at a conference in Brazil. While there, violent protests broke out over her appearance, and she was seriously threatened with her life. She helps us understand gender issues as they are situated in culture. Butler also has a theory about humor (not in these books) which influenced my writing of my TED talk, and my thinking about how humor interacts with culture. Finally, Butler is a strong believer in non-violence, and David asks her about the Israeli/Hamas conflict and her nonviolent beliefs in this interview.

Happy Saturday, I hope you are enjoying your weekend. Maybe I’ll do some drawing in the studio on camera tomorrow, its been too long. Planned to do it today, but I’m too tired (still) and I want to be peppy!