How can you be optimistic?

What a question to ask? I like to think of myself as an optimist

because most of the time when things are at their lowest I like to think "OK not much we can do here, let's see how we can move on"...because if you keep viewing the glass as being half empty, that seems to be an awfully dreary way to go through life.

K however has another opinion. She's just a kid, 2 years younger than me but only a year junior in college...as Tranquil Roomie's cousin, we get together and bug my poor TR for her various amusing foibles. She's a sweet thing, all rough and tough on the outside but a real marshmallow when it comes down to it. She runs. Whenever you see her, she seems somewhat furtive, always running away from some one, trying to blend in to the background despite distinctly fair skin and dead straight black hair. And she runs. Fast. out of our hostel. To the gate, For the food. Away from the food. She's seated with me on the ledge today...and we're talking as usual about our different views on life, she being the eternal hard-as-nails pessimist. You should not be optimistic she says, because there's nothing good in life! Ah but there is I say! No there isn't says this budding Bhuddist.

I tell her that people like her build walls around themselves so they cna't get hurt and she retorts with somehting very interesting...they get hurt too, may be even more so that others. But they don't want to get hurt further so they shut off. And she runs she says, to escape...because she has something at the back of her mind which says that if she runs fast and long enough, she'll find a place where all her problems disappear :(