ETHOS (Part 6): Optimism | Jake Haber

In a time when headlines echo with conflict, uncertainty, and collapse, it can feel foolish—maybe even dangerous—to remain hopeful. But what if optimism isn’t about ignoring reality, but about choosing how we respond to it? In part 6 of ETHOS, we dive into the difference between naïve positivity and what we’re calling Sacred Optimism—a courageous, disciplined, even strategic way of engaging with life.

 

We explore how your worldview shapes your participation in the world and examine the spiritual, historical, and psychological roots of optimism as a powerful human choice—not a prediction, but a practice. This is for anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed by the state of things but still senses there’s something worth planting, even if tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

 

Quotes:

 

1. James Baldwin

   “I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So I’m forced to be an optimist.”

2. Howard Zinn

   “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion… What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.”

3. Teilhard de Chardin

   “The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.”

4. Martin Luther (attributed)

   “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree today.”

5. Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

   “There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.”

6. Dhammapada 1:1 (Buddha)

   “With our thoughts, we make the world.”

7. Noam Chomsky

   “Optimism is a strategy for making a better future.”

8. Mariame Kaba

   “Hope is a discipline.”

9. Viktor Frankl

   “Everything can be taken from [us] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

10. John O’Donohue

    “The soul is the place where the eternal and time meet… where the future is still willing to emerge from the unknown.”