My song today is ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’. This song was written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach for the 1969 film ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’. The uplifting lyrics describe somebody who overcomes his troubles and worries by realising that "it won't be long until happiness itself will greet me."
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None of us is born with the inbred attitude of either an optimist or a pessimist; such is a disposition one acquires through a combination of nature and nurture. And yet, isn’t the fact that we are ever born at all the most optimistic thing that could ever have happened to us? The optimist believes that the ‘power of love’ is greater than the ‘potency of hate’, and proclaims that we there are far more ‘good’ people in the world than there are ‘bad’, and that a person will experience far more ‘pleasurable’ experiences in their lifetime than ‘painful’ ones. As soon as an optimist awakes on a morning, they tell themselves that ‘Today will be a good day’. The pessimist, on the other hand, holds no truck in assuming the best to exist in any situation when the worst is forever staring him in the face. In short, the two live in opposing universes where the optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, while the pessimist refuses to believe it and therefore does not benefit from the good things in life.
All of my life I have looked for the opportunity that is to be found in every difficult situation I faced, instead of focusing on the presenting difficulties to the detriment of being unable to see the best way forward. I am widely travelled, yet in all the places I have visited and all the experiences I have had, whilst I have seen many statues erected to great men and women, not once have I ever seen a monument erected to a pessimist!
Many of my own optimistic views and attitudes were formed during my childhood. I was fortunate in the extreme to have been raised in a happy household by two loving parents, and especially by a mother who literally refused to believe the bad about any person she ever met or the worst about any situation she ever faced. In fact, although I witnessed my mother cry bitter tears several times in her lifetime, whenever she cried, my mum invariably wept for the unfortunate circumstances of others, and never herself. If ever anyone accused mum of being too positive in her attitude and urged her to ‘get real’ about the people and the world around her, she would tell them that it did not hurt anyone to be optimistic, before reminding them that there would always be occasions and time enough to cry in one’s life.
Although my dear mother never advanced her education beyond the age of 14 years, she was endowed with a level of wisdom beyond that of most academic professors, especially where it concerned life and the good living of it.
My mother was the mother of seven children, of whom I was her firstborn. She had been brought up by parents who put their children’s future ahead of her own past. She believed that everyone had but one life on this earth, and that they should be allowed to live it for themselves and what they believed in, not for their parents. Mum believed that whatever she wanted in the future for her own children should mirror whatever they wanted for themselves. My mother was in essence a free spirit who never wished to restrict the liberty of her offspring. She believed that it was the duty and responsibility of good parents to prepare a sound grounding for their young so that when they were mature enough to fly the family nest, they would have the best of launch pads from which to independently ‘take off’.
Despite being the mother of a large family, and always existing on less than what would have been deemed ‘sufficient’ by most, my mother accepted her life with a degree of grace and gratitude. She displayed a level of generosity beyond her means that shames most of us today who have plenty to give, but who prefer to keep for themselves. Mum would gladly give her last shilling to a tramp before spending it on herself.
My father endowed me with the belief that ‘whatever I did in this life, I should always do my best’. The greatest gift mum bestowed on me was a positive attitude that life would always ‘turn out for the best’. Between the philosophical advice that both parents provided me with sprang my own positive philosophy that I have carried throughout my life: “ If I do my best in anything I do, I will experience the best of life”.
It is this positivism of the eternal optimist that has enabled me to withstand any struggle I have ever been faced with and to emerge victorious as a survivor from the most uncertain of battles. It took me many years to understand that true strength comes from the ability to open one’s heart and soul, and the willingness to show one’s own vulnerabilities. Mum’s positive view on the world and its inhabitants gained her immediate access to the lives, hearts and love of many people, and she remained in the affection of some stranger she had once helped many years after her own death.
Mum always stressed the importance of being able to dream. My mother knew that only dreamers dare to do. Mum knew that discovery, adventure, and the ability to follow my dreams would take me beyond the cross-roads of all indecision, and lead me towards finding new roads to travel, new and more satisfying ways to do things, new friends to share with, and new worlds to live in! My mother knew that therein lay the reward of the eternal optimist. In holding that view, my mother echoed the belief of David H. Keller, the 20th-century American author who once said that it is the optimist who lives the happier life and who does more with their time on earth. Mum instinctively knew that no pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to uncharted lands, or paved a new path on untrodden ground, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit. My mother knew that pessimism could never soothe a worried mind, or warm a cold heart, or comfort a starving child. She instinctively knew that only the optimistic held the key.
Many readers, like myself, will ascribe to a book they once read, the power of affirming their beliefs or even changing of their life for the better. Were I to select three books only from the many thousands I have read during my life, they would be ‘The Book of Genesis’. This is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament and is an account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, Israel's ancestors, and the origins of the Jewish people. Next, would be ‘Les Misérables’ by Victor Hugo. This book reminded me that everybody deserves a ‘second chance’ and was influential in leading me to become a Probation Officer at the age of thirty. Finally, my mother’s philosophy on positive thinking was affirmed and greatly enhanced in my later life by a book called, ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ by Norman Vincent Peale. Peale was an American minister of the church and author who died in 1993, and I would warmly recommend this read to anyone.
My own life was greatly shaped by my mother’s persuasion to adopt the philosophy of an optimist and the life of someone who believed that we are all of equal worth and should therefore have equal rights and opportunity to prosper in a just society. She helped me considerably in never judging a person’s worth by the colour of their skin or the nature of their belief. Being born in 1942, I was brought up in an England where life was ‘black and white’ and where it was normal to be racist in view, discriminatory in attitude and unjust in behaviour. As a nation, England was second only to America in its publicly displayed racism at the time. I still recall British landlords placing signs in their window during 1960 that boldly said: ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs!’.
In my later life, I would go on to father children who were brought up without non-racist attitudes, and when I was aged around sixty years, I would spend three years liaising with the Jamaican Minister of education and 32 Jamaican schools in Falmouth (the old slave capital port ) and 32 West Yorkshire schools in a trans-Atlantic project to increase awareness and reduce discrimination between black and white-skinned children in Jamaica and England. The books I wrote specifically to raise funds for school resources in Falmouth, Jamaica and my work in seeking to reduce racism was praised by the late Prime Minister of South Africa, Nelson Mandela when he personally phoned me up at my home in the year 2000.
The two things that have always given me a somewhat smug sense of satisfaction is that the nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or finish up being pleasantly surprised. Secondly, I always held the view that all pessimistic misogynistic men generally believe that ‘all women are bad’, whereas the romantically wicked side of me always held out the optimistic hope that they were!
Love and peace Bill xxx