Patterns

I'm hardly an expert, but I feel that there is a serious difference between being a pessimist and being realistic. The difference lies really in the person's outlook on life in relation to the negative stimulus. If seeing things turn out badly makes you constantly expect the worst you are a pessimist. However if you see things go badly and you observe how those misfortunes come into being, you can come to the conclusion that some things are very predictable. If you come to notice that certain behaviors in people follow a specific course of self-inflicted emotional pain, you can begin to expect those things. Now I remember being a kid in school and hearing a study on how negative thinking impacts life span. I remember my mother telling me I was so negative, but I later realized it wasn't true.

See If I woke up every morning expecting it to be shitty, I wouldn't bother living or getting out of bed. I find that noticing patterns in everything helps me in being prepared rather than throws me into a pit of depression. People have a problem with patterns when it comes to people. The idea of people being able to be categorized and their actions carefully tallied and graphed, seems to make them uncomfortable. These days we are raised to  value individualism over being part of a group. That's fine, but it makes everyone feel they are special, and when everyone is special no one is. I think it makes people upset to think that they have no control over their destiny, but if that's the case, why are there so many people that are religious? If you believe that a supernatural deity has a plan for you, who's to say that each is special unique and different. It's kind of hypocritical to find your free will is compromised, when you're okay with some deity having predestined certain things to happen for you that are unavoidable. If I'm becoming so mundane that my actions are predictable, I'd like to know about it. However, I take solace in the idea that there might me someone out there just like me. It's lonely being unique and if you're unique enough, it makes it impossible to have a normal social life. Sure too much predictability can be boring, but enough of it brings us together. Have fun thinking about that one tonight.