The Realistic Flow

The Optimists says, "when there is life, there is only hope I see." Pessimists says, "while there is life, there is only pain I see." Who got it right? To be honest, nothing wrong if people are becoming Optimist or Pessimist. At the core, the reality of our world present these dimensions constantly. Life is in constant flux. One ancient metaphore best describes life as blowing wind. Wind is always in constant motion. By these ever changing world, there is always hope and there is always pain in life. Although we can agree that they do not come in an equal degree, most of the time. Yet, to live only in one mode of life either one will becoming more and more insensitive (over-optimist) or miserable (Over-pessimist). If neither optimist only nor pessimist only, then what's the alternative? Here, I argue for the realist way of living. In his book Flow: The psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says that flow is an optimal state of consciousness whereby we perform the best and be at the best state of living, in any given situations. How can we be in this state of flow consistently? 

Victor Frankl, the famous psychologist once said, the more you aim for target, the more you miss it. Taking this statement seriously and apply it to our discussion, does it mean to reach the state of flow, we just do not do anything for if we do something, we might ended nowhere and far from flow-state, are not we? Maybe in some case yet but not necessary so for this particular moment. The state of flow does not mean that we just let ourselves to be drown unconsciously by the fluid circumstances around us, both negative or positive but to be consciously adaptive to the very flow of the things. In other words, when the things get bad, we try to chill a bit and step back. When thing get light, we move further a bit more. It's about finding a balance of action, mind and feeling within the realistic flow of the world. To be realistic is to have a balance and counter perspectives that even in hope we know there is a possibility of pain in the whole process. Also, in the midst of pain, we acknowledge there is always a glimpse of hope. This realistic flow of living need to be cultivated and assuredly cannot be attained without doing anything. That is why Mihaly said in his book Flow, "The best moment in our life are not the passive...Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen". 

To flow in the realistic flow of the world, we need to try our best to balance the spectrum of our thought so that we will never find ourselves ended miserably to the extreme. In Ancient time, Stoics already noticed the importance of living realistically and not in delusion (over pessimist/over optimist). To my surprise, many claimed that Stoics are the most pessimist people in the whole planet. Contrary to that judgement, Stoics are the most realistic people of all, so to speak. One of the very famous thinking that they shared was "thinking in advance." Always thinking the worst case that might be happening in future in each and every scenario. Once again, by doing that, it's not that they are pessimist is just a way of living realistically that it is true that sometimes, things won't go their way, as we often wishes.

By thinking the worst possible scenario before-hand consequently, they are preparing their best before hand which in another way also projecting a stance of hope at the same time whereby the possible outcome might at the end hopefully will established, if they are preparing well to deal with the hypothetical worst plot of the future. When the aspect of pessimism and optimism are blended together so tightly until we cannot tear both apart, we found realism. To conclude our discussion thus far, to follow the flow of the realistic flow of the world there are three aspects we can call for attention, always balancing, thinking and preparing. Without doubt, these three principles for flowing realistically could help us to live the very best life of ours or at least, increasing the quality of our life or as Stoics might also says that when we are becoming realistic people, we "will be happier!"