Thread:JeloElducal/@comment-26888167-20190709152909/@comment-26888167-20190719040826

Moon Snail wrote: ... Eh. I can see why many would prefer to look at the positive side of life, but I just can't. I'm a cynic to the core, and I just prefer to look at the bad side of things. It's not very healthy, yeah, but I just feel that it's more “realistic” to me. "realistic" is a very subjective term to be honest, since its definition depends on the person's definition of what reality is. I's like the case of asking if a dog is large. If you compare it to a mouse, it definitely is large, but if you compare it to an elephant, it's actually very small. The very definition of what "realistic" means depends on what you choose to see as your reality. At least that's why I prefer to see things the positive way. That's the kind of world I prefer to live in.

Say for example you enter a supermarket, and are asked to look for all the things that are brown. Chances are, you'll find many things that are brown. But what happens? Since you were looking for all the brown things, you never payed attention to all the red things, the blue things, the green things, and every other color. You return to the supermarket to look for those colors, and you'll see there's many of those things too.

That's how reality works. Remember that we perceive reality through what we see, what we hear, what we think, what we feel. Our senses, our thoughts and our feelings are the glasses through which we see our reality. I've heard many people that are cynic argumenting that the way they see the world is the most "realistic" compared to optimists. But in reality, they think that's the truth because that's how they see the world. If you see the world through the glasses of cynicism, of course you'll think that's the most realistic way to see the world, since it's what you can see. What optimists do is that we decide to see reality through other glasses, ones that focus on all those colors that I mentioned earlier. If you look out for those, you'll see them. If you look out for brown, that's what you'll see.

For example, let's pretend we're an animal that's colorblind, so we see the world in black & white. To us, that's the realistic way to see the world, since our eyes don't see colors at all. So if we heard another species of animals tell us about colors, rainbows, etc, of course we won't understand them, since that's not what we see. However, in our case, every person gets to choose the glasses through which they wish to see reality. In my opinion, there is no truly "realistic" way to see the world, since the definition of what we perceive as reality itself depends on what we receive and process, not on what's really there.

Think of this for a moment. When you see a green leaf, that leaf is actually not green. In fact, it's every color except green. Remember than white ligght is the result of combining the seven colors of the rainbow? What happens is that the light touches the leaf, and then the leaf absorbs all the colors that aren't green, such as red, blue, yellow, purple, etc. The green light gets reflected instead, and that's why we see it green. The leaf isn't green, in fact, that's the only color that leaf isn't, since it has absorbed all the other colors except green. However, we see the leaf as green, and we'd never say the leaf is red or blue. That's because our reality is shaped by the way we perceive it, not by what is truly there. That's why I believe there's no "realistic" way to see the world. Reality is subjective, and everyone sees the world in a different way. Why do you think some people believe red is the best color, others prefer blue, others prefer green or yellow? Why do people have different interests or hobbies? Whyis everyone passionate about a differnt subject? Everyone sees the world in a different way, so that's why it's impossible to have a 100% realistic way to see the world. The best we can do is to choose the glasses we wish to see the world through, and at least if you ask me, I prefer the glasses that make reality a lot prettier.