The Incurable Optimist

What could be good about feeling bad?

I’ve been sick for the past couple of days: nothing serious or contagious, just a bad reaction to a prescription drug. I’m finally feeling somewhat better, well enough to consider what an occasional bout of malaise can add to a life.

Why would I aim for such a droll thing? Well, it’s a universal experience: everyone is subject to these episodes of minor distress. Even the healthiest humans get colds or headaches or (mild) Covid. Instead of deploring these inevitable setbacks, why not explore what good they may bring?

Perhaps only an incurable optimist would think to make the effort…and if that’s what it takes, may I nominate myself?

If temperament is genetic, I was doomed to be an optimist, for my mother and father were both extremely good-natured, extraverted, and cheerful. I never saw my father angry, and my mother’s tempers were rare and short. They each thought other people were basically good and that life would turn out well. Life was essentially merry—and they helped make it so.

If, on the other hand, temperament is dictated by nurture, my fate as an optimist was equally sealed, for I was raised with love and joy and excitement. I remember one day when I was ten, walking with my mother in Greenwich Village. We had just picked up the laundry, which we pulled along in a black iron cart, and the sun was shining on my face. My beautiful mother was smiling, and I thought, “I’m the happiest girl in the world!”

So rose-colored glasses were inevitable and have persisted to this day (except with regard to the local, national and international situation).

When I was young, this optimism was unfashionable, and throughout college and grad school, I hid my sunny view of life.  T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner and John Paul Sartre were not optimists. No serious writer was. Optimists were naïve; their world view was mistaken. Voltaire mocked optimism in Candide; it was Panglossian rubbish.

Now I’m more comfortable coming out of the closet, with science validating my nature. A study published in the August 16, 2019 issue of Science magazine states that “Optimistic people live as much as 15% longer than pessimists, according to a new study spanning thousands of people and 3 decades. Scientists combined data from two large, long-term studies . . . After controlling for health conditions, behaviors like diet and exercise, and other demographic information, the scientists were able to show that the most optimistic women (top 25%) lived an average of 14.9% longer than their more pessimistic peers. For the men the results were a bit less dramatic: The most optimistic of the bunch lived 10.9% longer than their peers, on average.”

Men in the US die at an average of 73.5 years of age; women at 79.3. (The US places a lowly 43^rd in the world in life expectancy, primarily because of our economic inequality.) With the “optimist bonus,” both men and women can live many years longer than that average! Furthermore, these tend to be healthier years. For some reason, optimists have less inflammation in their bodies, and inflammation has been linked to a host of chronic diseases.

Is the correlation between good cheer and good health infallible? Of course not. My mother lived to be 98, but my father died at 74. Nonetheless, there are clearly health benefits to optimism, and expecting good things to happen can make them happen. After all, looking for the good in people helps bring out the good in people.  

So now that I’m over my latest bout of illness (caused by a violent reaction to Risedronate Sodium), what can this optimist say of the experience? What good can possibly result from two days of nausea and fever and pain? Throughout this piece I am only talking about mild, non-worrisome sickness, of a couple of days’ duration.

I got two days of rest and relaxation. Sacked out and aching, all I could do was lie in bed and read. Sometimes I let Audible tell me a story; sometimes I turned pages. Between naps, I read an entire novel by a former classmate. Luckily, it wasn’t too demanding or alarming.

Being sick changes up the routine. You don’t have to eat (or make) regular meals. You need others to help you, and they are usually happy to do so.

Unfortunately, my recent sickness descended abruptly at my own dinner party. Before serving dessert, I had to gasp goodnight and stagger upstairs. Later on, I heard my guests cleaning up in the kitchen. People like to help; they enjoy being of service.

Apparently, if you want to make friends, it’s better to ask them for a favor than to do one for them. “Do Me a Favor So You’ll Like Me” is the title of a 2011 Forbes article on this phenomenon. The piece states: “If you do a person a favor, you would expect that person to like you more.  However, the research shows something different. If you do someone a favor, you tend to like that person more as a result.” This is called the Ben Franklin effect, after the man who first identified it and asked a then-enemy to lend him a rare book. Your being sick gives others the chance to do you a favor, and it strengthens the bond between you.

But the greatest thing about getting sick is . . . getting better again! When you recover, you have a new appreciation of life, of health, of your usual routines. The sunshine is brighter, the croissant more flakey, the birdsong more poignant than before you were sick. Pleasure gets old and is impossible to maintain; being a bit sick is a way to leave the hedonic treadmill and return to health . . . with a greater capacity for joy.

The best way to enjoy our pleasures is to be without them for a while.

Photo by Nic Y-C on Unsplash.