I have been a pessimist all my life.When I was born, I didn’t cry because I was cold or because all the lights and noises caused a sensory overload. I cried because I was already contemplating death and the long, terrible life I had to live through to get to my final slumber. In fact, I am pretty sure that by the age of 5 I was mentally preparing myself to burn in hell for eternity.

However, us pessimist are wildly misunderstood in the society. We are regarded as downers, party poopers etc. Even though our habit of dwelling in the darkness is quite apparent, pessimists are complicated creatures who need intensive studies and researches to be fully understood and appreciated by their “happier” peers. In this blog post, I’ll try to showcase the wroking of a pessimist’s mind to the world and hopefully, by the end of it you’ll be able to understand your “not so happy” friends a bit better.

1. We can never “live in the moment”

Pessimists are always thinking about the worst. No matter if we are at a party, a wedding, or any occasion that normal people consider joyful, we’ll be waiting for the worst thing to happen. Do NOT tell us to chill out because it is something that we are physically and mentally incapable of doing. While you dance to the beats of “Sheela ki Jawani” on your sister’s wedding, I’m gonna be watching that chandelier above you, waiting for it to come crashing down and crush you. Dark? Yes. Twisted? Yes. Plausible? A definite yes.

2. We are always ready

When the fear of a zombie apocalypse constantly looms over your head, you are bound to end up building a safety bunker. There is a reason why all of you run to your pessimist friend to save the day when all hell break loose because you know that he/she would have a trick up their sleeves to save the day. We anticipate the worst and we come prepared for the worst.

3. We are never disappointed

Expectations lead to disappointments. Pessimists neither expect nor are disapointed.

4. Pure happiness is a feeling very rare to us

This is something I realised when I got my O level result. It was a near perfect result (no intention of bragging) but as my classmates celebrated, all I felt was….”meh”. This was because I was already fussing about my A level.Pessimists find the worst in every situation so it should not come as a surprise that we are not the celebratory types.

5. Optimists are not better than Pessimists or vise versa

Optimists are usually considered as people who revolutionize the world but what ya’ll forgetting is that it was the lifeboats that saved thousands of lives when titanic sank. Who could have thought about lifeboats other than a pessimist? Optimists go around stirring trouble and in the end pessimist have to clean their mess. In short, the world needs both of these minds to survive.

6. We are not miserable

Our world perception might be different but that does not mean that we hate life, or living in general. You might only see stars in a beautiful starry night and we might see burning masses of fire on brink of death but that does not mean that we can’t appreciate the beauty of it. We just have two ways of looking at the world around us.

7. Last but not the least: We do know how to party

No we are not the killjoys or party poopers that you perceive us to be. When in mood, we will blow the freaking roof off while dancing our hearts out but before blowing the roof off, we’ll make sure that everyone has a helmet on.