Optimism Pessimism

While working for an FMCG company, we used to get the volume forecasting from a renowned research agency, they used to give three types of volumes – Optimistic, Realistic and Pessimistic. They got that from the responses from the studies they conducted.

Well, they backed it up with the databases they had, in real life, what is the base for the optimism, pessimism.

We all have heard that story – a village, facing drought, the priest calls all villagers for the prayers to please the rain God and bless with rain, all villagers come and how a little girl carries the umbrella for the prayers. That’s the optimism, it doesn’t have any base, no data, no history, nothing. Pure gut feeling and miracle happens…just like that.

While pessimism, there are many things, proofs, evidences, historical figures to substantiate it. A simple example of cricket match, team A scores 400 runs in 50 over match, as their inning gets over, we sitting in-front of TV sets assume that team B will lose now, we start with how big is the required run rate, how the old pitch won’t be effective, the hero batsman not in the form. We dig out all the inferences from the past on how they got defeated in such scenarios and then only someone from the team literally snatches out the victory, single handed.

The weak side of optimism is, it doesn’t have anything to back up, substantiate, while for pessimism, there is no dearth of such things.

In our daily life too, we encounter many such occurrences. Getting late, stuck in the traffic, about to catch the flight, seems difficult, you know, by now the gates must have been closed, you know that you have to make it for that, it’s important and despite being late, you reach at the airport, just to know that the flight delayed and rescheduled after an hour.

The score Kapil Deo made during the first cricket world cup win was also the optimism shown that time, otherwise who believed that we could win against the biggies of that time.

Let life give us many reasons for pessimism, always keep the optimist alive in ourselves to get the best out of it.

Vb