optimism

181:1.8A cer­tain amount of both sto­icism and op­ti­mism are ser­vice­able in liv­ing a life on earth, but nei­ther has aught to do with that su­perb peace which the Son of God be­stows upon his breth­ren in the flesh. The peace which Mi­chael gives his chil­dren on earth is that very peace which filled his own soul when he him­self lived the mor­tal life in the flesh and on this very world. The peace of Je­sus is the joy and sat­is­fac­tion of a God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual who has achieved the tri­umph of learn­ing fully how to do the will of God while liv­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh. The peace of Je­sus’ mind was founded on an ab­so­lute hu­man faith in the ac­tu­al­ity of the di­vine Fa­ther’s wise and sym­pa­thetic over­care. Je­sus had trou­ble on earth, he has even been falsely called the “man of sor­rows,” but in and through all of these ex­pe­ri­ences he en­joyed the com­fort of that con­fi­dence which ever em­pow­ered him to pro­ceed with his life pur­pose in the full as­sur­ance that he was achiev­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

160:4.13But life will be­come a bur­den of ex­is­tence un­less you learn how to fail grace­fully. There is an art in de­feat which no­ble souls al­ways ac­quire; you must know how to lose cheer­fully; you must be fear­less of dis­ap­point­ment. Never hes­i­tate to ad­mit fail­ure. Make no at­tempt to hide fail­ure un­der de­cep­tive smiles and beam­ing op­ti­mism. It sounds well al­ways to claim suc­cess, but the end re­sults are ap­palling. Such a tech­nique leads di­rectly to the cre­ation of a world of un­re­al­ity and to the in­ev­i­ta­ble crash of ul­ti­mate dis­il­lu­sion­ment.

• not blind and self-deceived

100:7.9Je­sus was an un­usu­ally cheer­ful per­son, but he was not a blind and un­rea­son­ing op­ti­mist. His con­stant word of ex­hor­ta­tion was, “Be of good cheer.” He could main­tain this con­fi­dent at­ti­tude be­cause of his unswerv­ing trust in God and his un­shak­able con­fi­dence in man. He was al­ways touch­ingly con­sid­er­ate of all men be­cause he loved them and be­lieved in them. Still he was al­ways true to his con­vic­tions and mag­nif­i­cently firm in his de­vo­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will.

• associates felt constrained to share

100:7.12Je­sus was con­sis­tently cheer­ful, not­with­stand­ing he some­times drank deeply of the cup of hu­man sor­row. He fear­lessly faced the re­al­i­ties of ex­is­tence, yet was he filled with en­thu­si­asm for the gospel of the king­dom. But he con­trolled his en­thu­si­asm; it never con­trolled him. He was un­re­servedly ded­i­cated to “the Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” This di­vine en­thu­si­asm led his un­spir­i­tual breth­ren to think he was be­side him­self, but the on­look­ing uni­verse ap­praised him as the model of san­ity and the pat­tern of su­preme mor­tal de­vo­tion to the high stan­dards of spir­i­tual liv­ing. And his con­trolled en­thu­si­asm was con­ta­gious; his as­so­ciates were con­strained to share his di­vine op­ti­mism.

• truly contagious

127:3.14For four years their stan­dard of liv­ing had steadily de­clined; year by year they felt the pinch of in­creas­ing pov­erty. By the close of this year they faced one of the most dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ences of all their up­hill strug­gles. James had not yet be­gun to earn much, and the ex­penses of a fu­neral on top of ev­ery­thing else stag­gered them. But Je­sus would only say to his anx­ious and griev­ing mother: “Mother-Mary, sor­row will not help us; we are all do­ing our best, and mother’s smile, per­chance, might even in­spire us to do bet­ter. Day by day we are strength­ened for these tasks by our hope of bet­ter days ahead.” His sturdy and prac­ti­cal op­ti­mism was truly con­ta­gious; all the chil­dren lived in an at­mo­sphere of an­tic­i­pa­tion of bet­ter times and bet­ter things. And this hope­ful cour­age con­tributed might­ily to the de­vel­op­ment of strong and no­ble char­ac­ters, in spite of the de­pres­sive­ness of their pov­erty.

• not blind and self-deceived

181:1.9Je­sus was de­ter­mined, per­sis­tent, and thor­oughly de­voted to the ac­com­plish­ment of his mis­sion, but he was not an un­feel­ing and cal­loused stoic; he ever sought for the cheer­ful as­pects of his life ex­pe­ri­ences, but he was not a blind and self-de­ceived op­ti­mist. The Mas­ter knew all that was to be­fall him, and he was un­afraid. Af­ter he had be­stowed this peace upon each of his fol­low­ers, he could con­sis­tently say, “Let not your heart be trou­bled, nei­ther let it be afraid.”

102:6.7Be­lief may not be able to re­sist doubt and with­stand fear, but faith is al­ways tri­umphant over doubt­ing, for faith is both pos­i­tive and liv­ing. The pos­i­tive al­ways has the ad­van­tage over the neg­a­tive, truth over er­ror, ex­pe­ri­ence over the­ory, spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties over the iso­lated facts of time and space. The con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence of this spir­i­tual cer­tainty con­sists in the so­cial fruits of the spirit which such be­liev­ers, faithers, yield as a re­sult of this gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Said Je­sus: “If you love your fel­lows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my dis­ci­ples.”

195:8.12Sec­u­lar so­cial and po­lit­i­cal op­ti­mism is an il­lu­sion. With­out God, nei­ther free­dom and lib­erty, nor prop­erty and wealth will lead to peace.

181:1.7Je­sus gives peace to his fel­low do­ers of the will of God but not on the or­der of the joys and sat­is­fac­tions of this ma­te­rial world. Un­be­liev­ing ma­te­ri­al­ists and fa­tal­ists can hope to en­joy only two kinds of peace and soul com­fort: Ei­ther they must be sto­ics, with stead­fast res­o­lu­tion de­ter­mined to face the in­ev­i­ta­ble and to en­dure the worst; or they must be op­ti­mists, ever in­dulging that hope which springs eter­nal in the hu­man breast, vainly long­ing for a peace which never re­ally comes.