One of my friends recently sent me a text:
“Someday you’ll have to share with me how you can be highly rational and an optimist at the same time”.
I took me quite a while to process this and I finally responded with:
“I’ve been thinking about this question a lot and have thought I’ve had the answer, but I’m not sure. I think it’s a combination of willful ignorance (of the futility of life) and following things that genuinely excite me and spark my curiosity. And then also balancing that with the realization that I don’t feel like things are actually futile when I’m in a healthy place mentally. Conversely when I’m in an unhealthy place mentally and have subconscious issues I need to work through: nothing sparks my curiosity or interest”.
So the next question is: how do we stay in that healthy mental place?