Contrary to Popular Belief

I think we have all been in this situation before. A friend comes to you with a problem asking for help. You listen to their side of the story and hear all the nitty gritty details. You sit back, reflect on it with your own life experiences and then give them your advice. What you would do in that situation and what would most likely be the best course of action for them. You explain it soundly, logically and with plenty of evidence and self-experience to back it up. However, you see the words zoom right over your friend’s head. You sit back and watch them go do the exact opposite of what you had just suggested, reminding yourself again and again that they had come to YOU for advice. A little time passes and after the inevitable train wreck has occurred; said friend comes back crying and upset talking about their woes again. All you can do is sit there and say either out loud or to yourself (depending on the type of friend you are):

“I told you this would happen.” Or “I told you so.”

There are a few of us in this world that actually don’t like the fact that these words leave our mouth on a routine basis. We actually don’t enjoy being right most of the time. To be frankly honest, it’s exhausting. Most of the time we wish that the universe would prove us wrong. We don’t enjoy the fact that our ability to see the trouble around the corner ends up being the usual reality of the situation. In fact, we celebrate when we’re proven wrong. We love nothing more than for one of our friends to come to us and tell us the exact opposite of what we thought would happen had actually occurred. We love hearing the magic words in that situation: “You were wrong.” It’s because hearing these words actually restores our faith in humanity just a bit.

We don’t enjoy the way our friends view us when this becomes the norm. We don’t like how people tend to alienate us or refuse to tell us some things because they are afraid that we will be right. They don’t wish to hear the potentially negative outcome. They want to hear that everything will be alright and that it will all work out in the end. Though there is nothing wrong with this, it tends to be the harder path to achieve in life. Therefore, people that have come to us in the past start to fear that we’ll be right again. So, they’ll go to the optimists who will assure them that everything will end up okay and that they don’t have a thing to be worried about and, to be fair, there is nothing wrong with optimistic people. If we had nothing but pessimistic people in this world, everyone would have depression to be sure. However, there is a difference between a pessimist and a realist.

Merriam-Webster defines a pessimist as a person who is inclined to expect poor outcomes: someone who is given to pessimism. Pessimism in itself is defined as an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst outcome; the doctrine that reality is essentially evil; and believe in the doctrine that evil overbalances happiness in life. These are people who can never see the good in ANYTHING. The rain will always pour, the devil is around every corner and nothing will ever turn out in a positive light.

A realist however is defined as a person who recognizes what is real or possible in a particular situation: one who accepts and deals with things as they really are. These people follow realism which is defined as concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary. These people do not daydream nor sugar coat things. These are the people who will tell you like it is and won’t be afraid to hurt your feelings if it means speaking the truth to you. They’ll let you know what they honestly think and will give you the cold-hard facts.

More often than not, realists are formed when someone has come through life usually getting the crappier end of the stick. They went through life hoping and wishing that they could be optimistic. Hoping that everything would work out in the end. This is not to say that realists do not still hope for a better outcome. More than ever they want the world to end on a more positive note. I would sum up a realist’s point of view with one quote that I am sure we are all familiar with spoken by Benjamin Disraeli: I am prepared for the worst but hope for the best. We all hope that things will turn out okay. However, there is no harm in being prepared for when things may not go the way we hope. Having backup plans in case other plans turn south. Making sure that you keep your guard up and don’t go blindly into a situation. We have all done these things and I think we need to stop giving realists a bad rap.

We are known as know-it-alls. We are known as Debby-downers. We are known as pessimists. We are known as people who always have a rain cloud above their heads; But there are many things we are not known for. Planners. Preppers. People who are ready for anything. People who seem to always know how things will end up and are ahead of the pack. You may look down on us but given what has been happening as of late. I think there are a lot of us realists sitting around looking at the televisions with a heavy heart and a sad expression on our faces wishing we were wrong, muttering the words over and over again to ourselves:

“I told you this would happen.”