The only honest way to get to optimism is by working through everything that’s happened to you. Including the darkness, the rage, the tears, the emptiness, the stuckness, the possibility of losing everything, the despair. “After the despair comes the despairing of the despair,” said a poster I saw somewhere. Something always comes after despair, but it is not necessarily the despairing of the despair; it might just be a sigh, a moment of restlessness, a blink, a reckless leap in some direction.
It’s a devastated optimism. What other kind could we still believe in?