What colour are your glasses?
Even if you don’t wear glasses.
The idiom “seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses” sometimes has a negative connotation i.e. the person is not seeing things realistically.
But what is reality?
Out walking today, I met a friend I hadn’t met for months. I asked how things were going. She responded, “Meh, comme ci, comme ca” – neither good, not bad. Later I asked a neighbour the same question. “So-so. Same crap, different day”. He then recounted everything that was making his life miserable, almost as if he wanted me to join in the misery. I quickly took flight!
I tend to stay away from naysayers. I even avoid T-shirts with captions like “Life Sucks!”, or “Is Today Over Yet?”, preferring slogans like, “Have Fun, Stay Awesome!”, and “Life’s a Beach” (not the alternative B-wording!) and “Test Negative, Stay Positive”.
Some people, given a chance, will whine. They complain when people are upbeat or cheerful, grumbling “She’s such a dreamer, not in tune with reality”. A leader I knew once called an employee a Pollyanna, because of her glass-half-full attitude and optimism. That employee was a star who got things done by motiving people.
Certainly, life has challenges – there’s inequality, injustice, cruelty, sadness. It often seems the “good” people get the worst, while the “bad” ones have it easy. Truth be told, WE get to decide whether we want our days to be happy or mediocre. If we walk around looking for bad things, we’ll find them and wallow in them. Then we’ll look for some more. Only to lament later, “when it rains, it pours”.
Life is also full of joy, beauty and love. While we do have to face our challenges and deal with issues, we have the power within us to create the world, our reality, that our belief system allows us to see or not see.
We don’t see the world as it is – we see the world as we choose to. That is reality.
Seeing the world in a positive hue may have lasting beneficial effects on the person wearing rose-tinted glasses. If we all see our lives through such lenses, we may experience a happier state of being.
Rose-tinted glasses give you 1) hope, 2) happiness and 3) peace.
Hope for a positive outcome for most things. With little desire to see things negatively, wearers feel a sense of happiness that is rarely dampened. Stress is not a big part of their lives, simply because they see reality in a more relaxed way.
Sure, they get disappointed, like everyone. But rose-tinted glasses allow them to have short-lived disappointment: things will look up, get better, be great again.
While philosophers debate the meaning of reality, we can create our own – by being relentlessly hopeful and optimistic, and inspiring others to be the same.
Maybe rose-tinted glasses are not a bad thing. Try using the phrase as a compliment next time!
If the world was absolute, wouldn’t you rather be a Pollyanna than a defeatist?
Send me your comments! bernadette@gogettercoaching.com .