Outlook

Our outlook can change at a moment’s notice. It just takes one life changing moment, or a series of life changing decisions, and then everything we had believed in can get dismantled.

The ideas we hold are simply that: ideas. Can they resist the change of time, the course of unexpected events? Are the principles and values we hold onto dearly immutable, or are they subject to change and modification?

The way we handle difficulties, as well as respond to conflict and disagreement, speak volumes compared to the ideas we simply believe. There can be a duality between the two, similar to someone who says to do one thing but does the opposite. The truth is in the way we act, in what we choose to do.

Our outlook can be positive or negative, and thus, they can give us confidence and certainty, or make us dejected and pessimistic. Between the positive and negative outlooks, there’s a middle ground: being realistic. But what does that mean exactly? To be realistic, we are not overly optimistic, nor overly pessimistic. We’re in the middle. We see that things can go both ways. But if we’re stuck in the middle, we might not take chances, might not achieve great success or change.

Our outlook determines a great deal about our attitude and the way we approach forks in the road, but as we mature and age, our outlook becomes molded not by our own ideas, but by the complex interaction of life-changing moments and events, and the decisions we make during and after they occur.