I AM an Optimist. Period.
No IFS. No buts. No perhapses.
Maybe it’s genetic. My father was an optimist. Even when, at the age of 45, he had to flee his native Germany to a primitive little country in the Middle East, his spirits remained high. Though he had to adapt to a new country, a hot climate, hard physical labor and grinding poverty, he was happy. At least he had saved his wife and four children, the youngest of whom was I.
Today, on Israel’s 64th birthday (according to the Hebrew calendar), I am still an optimist.
SOME TIME ago I bumped into the writer Amos Oz at a wedding and we talked about this curiosity, my optimism. He said that he was a pessimist. Being a pessimist, he said, was a win-win situation. If things turn to the better, you are happy. If things get worse, you are still happy, because you have been right all along.
The trouble with pessimism, I told him, was that it leads nowhere. Pessimism relieves you of any urge to do something. If things are going to get worse anyhow, why bother? Pessimism is a comfortable attitude. It even allows you to be contemptuous of the optimists, who still struggle for a better world. Optimism is for simpletons.
But this is exactly what it’s all about. Only optimists can struggle. If you don’t believe in a better world, a better country, a better society, you can’t fight for them. You can only sit in your armchair in front of the TV, tut-tutting at the stupidity of the human race, and particularly your own people, and feel superior.
Whenever I confess to being an optimist, I am showered with disdain. Don’t I see what’s happening around me? Was this the state you imagined on May 14, 1948, when you listened to Ben-Gurion's speech on the radio and prepared yourself for the night’s battle?