the euphoria of pessimism

For optimists, the most perplexing question is how one becomes a pessimist – if one is not born one.

To admire a misanthrope.

“What can be usefully postponed can be even more usefully abandoned” (Epictetus).

Pessimism is the most generous of thoughts; it includes everyone, if only by virtue of their existing. ~ * ~

The more I talk to people, the less I see the point in conversation. I’ve often been in the midst of a conversation and have suddenly, unwillingly, been extracted mysteriously from it, as if I were observing the whole thing with a strange sense of detached melancholy, like an out-of-body experience.

“…the stammerings of an old man who does not seem to have achieved a full psychic victory over an awkward adolescence…”

Sometimes I’m asked if I’m a pessimist. I need to find a clever answer to this question. Or make up a good joke. But the truth is that I am a pessimist… except when writing about pessimism. I’ve managed to make pessimism a form of therapy.

Morbidity. I used to be afraid of exercising. That was before I was dealing with these health problems. Now I’m afraid of not exercising. The fear is the same.

Schopenhauer once described comedy as “seriousness concealed within a joke.” The inverse is philosophy.