I am generally an Optimist – a glass half full kind of guy. Not only do I see the glass half full, if one is sitting around I will drink its content without being sure whether it’s solution for soaking contact lenses or sour milk left from a previous meal. I am not sure if this is a gift or a dysfunction, but for the most part, I see the world as a positive place, and most people are really pretty good at their core. (I know some of my religious friends would argue than all men are sinful at their core. To this I would agree theologically, but I hold to the fact that we had Original Glory before Original Sin. Why else would there be a Fall of Man? Anyway, that is fodder for another blog)
An Optimist, as one person said, is a man who when treed by a lion, he enjoys the view. I have been treed by a few lions. The kind on two legs who back you into corners, threatening to devour every last shred of dignity. Of course, I see the good in them. So when I came home from a church business meeting, bleeding from tattered flesh, my comment, “Well, they just didn’t quite see things my way, we’ll work through it. They are great guys!” This, of course continues until Mutiny on the Bounty. Enjoy the view.
One story I love about an Incurable Optimist – I don’t think it is a true story – is about a little boy and a pile of pony poop. As the story goes, the parents of this boy tried to cure him of his incessant optimism. So they devised a plan to surprise him on his birthday with the prospect of a great gift, only to allow him to feel his disappoinment when his expectations are crushed, thus leveling out his viewing point. They lure him into the garage where there is a massive amount of horse manure. (ok, these parents are beginning to sound like sickos right now). The little optimist takes one look at the mountain of poop and dives in with a shriek of excitement, exclaiming, “If there is this much poop, there has to be a pony in there somewhere!!”
I can really understand that kid. Our friends invited us to the coast recently. Well, metaphorically, I went to that garage. We arrived in the middle of the night at a place called Lawson’s Landing, described by most people as “funky”. It was a combination fishing community, campground and hideout for pirates. It is somewhere on Bodega Bay, famous of course for being were Alfred Hitchcock filmed his creepy film, The Birds. (I believe some of those birds still exist.)
Anyway, we arrived in the middle of the night, partly because we couldn’t quite find it – even the GPS was confused. The other part was because the camper was shrouded in a deep misty fog which lingers most of the time, except maybe when it burns off about 2 p.m. but then rolls in again by 5 p.m. “Is this it??”, we asked incredulously as our car slowly crawled through the potholes. Ok, so we were imagining a pony. This was no pony, my friends.
The old camper, once pried open, reeked of mildew and its mustiness caused my lungs to protest. I felt my bronchial passage tighten up as if to say, “No way is that fungus laced air getting in here!”. It had a rather nice “master bedroom” that you had to step up into, sort of like a loft… or maybe a tree house. The other “beds” were the kind that pull out from a couch… sort of like Transformers. The couch morphed into a lumpy “double bed” that would sleep two if both were munchkins. The campground itself, looked like my uncle’s salvaging yard he owned when I was a kid. We called it a junk yard. It was a “salvaging yard” to him because he would extract parts from cars and resell them to people who would rather not buy new parts for old cars.
As our hearts began to sink, expecting something a little different from a “weekend at the coast” with our friends from California, the Incurable Optimist in me spoke up, “There is a pony in here somewhere!” It began with the locals.
“Here comes the mayor of Whoville now,” said the jovial, plump woman who reminded us of the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” character on the Titanic played by Kathy Bates. Just then this man in a golf cart appears from somewhere in the fog. We felt as if we stepped into a novel. Maybe a Charles Dickens or Hemingway story filled with colorful characters in strange places. Each character was unique and seemed oblivious to the cold, misty fog. Life as usual for a hearty people.
“Hey, did you see the Ocean glowing on the way in?” Unsinkable Molly asked. I do recall some kind of strange flickering light, thought maybe it was a fog light, or a UFO or something over the cliff. She proceeded to say things like “Plankton,” “phosphorous,” and “very rare occurance”. That’s all I needed to hear. It didin’t take long for the guys and I to scamper off in search of the “pony”. A glowing ocean sounded very sweet… even in the middle of the night. We knew we wouldn’t be sleeping in the camper anyway.
We went off in search of the glowing ocean, shouldn’t be too difficult to find. Trying to make our way to the beach, we plodded through thick, scratchy beach grass and scuffled up tall mountains of sand through darkness so thick it felt mushy. The path was illumined by a downloaded flashlight app to our iphones. There we saw it, the glowing ocean! In the distant, the eerie blue glow rippled on each wave creating a surreal moment that left each one of us almost speechless.
Apparently, the phenomena of glowing foam was caused by the bioluminescence in plankton that occurs when their bodies are disturbed. Bioluminescence, or a flash of light, is used to evade predators and acts as a defense mechanism. I suppose the sudden flash is supposed to freak out a predator and scare it away perhaps. I see optimism! When you are agitated, disturbed and ready to become someone’s dinner, it’s a time to shine the brightest! Look for the pony!
We stood on the beach that night, giving God praise for even more of His handiwork. Hidden gems everywhere. Acres of diamonds. There are too many beautiful moments that occur that reveal the miraculous. Pessimism, tends to focus on what is wrong, ugly, or lacking. Optimism tends to reframe a moment to focus in on what is right, beautiful or expansive. Gratitude expands our awareness. Optimists believe God is always good and the world is a beautiful place…. somewhere, somehow.
So when life’s circumstances give you a pile of crap, keep searching, there’s a pony in there somewhere!
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