ON OPTIMISM

An appropriate subject, given the title of this blog.

In a long email to me, a friend recently described me as "Mr. Neutral." To back this up, he cited several examples in which I believed the best in people. His example (with a certain amount of hyperbole) was:

FRIEND: I think Hitler was bad. What do you think, Mr. Neutral?
HYPERBOLE ME: Well, I mean, he did have a pretty stressful week before he started the Holocaust.

Obviously, I am not to that extreme. But if a situation comes up where I can give someone the benefit of the doubt, I probably will. If a friend is late meeting me, it's not that they don't respect me or my time; it's that something else came up. If a girl tells me she just wants to be friends, I assume she means it (although I have found this to rarely be the case). And when I have a judicial meeting with a student...well, if you are a student here, you probably want me hearing your case:

STUDENT: We thought we were drinking root beer.
HYPERBOLE ME: I see...
STUDENT: But it turned out it was LIGHT beer.
HYPERBOLE ME: Sounds reasonable.

It only gives me pause to wonder where optimism stops and "being a chump" starts. It's a line I dance with daily and would like to remain on the non-chump side, if at all possible.