Episode 71: Why There Is Every Reason to Be Optimistic

Welcome to Wisdom from the Aerial View, the podcast for those who are seeking meaning

and purpose in their lives. Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening, Dr. Klein. How are you today?

Uh I'm very good. Very good. How are you? I am good, too. I will tell our listeners here that we're talking today on a Sunday. Sundays are nice. They're just peaceful, kind of quiet days. Um the work week is over, getting ready for the next work week for those of you who work. Those of you don't work, Sunday is no different than any other day. But today is a day for me to reflect and to think. And to think about a subject that I wanted to talk about, optimism versus pessimism. We're living, I think, through very pessimistic times. And so I I said to you, let's talk about that. There was a piece that um a wonderful writer named Frank Bruni, the New York Times. Um he used to be a columnist, and now he's a professor at Duke. And he wrote a piece called Being a College Teacher Is Strange right now. And in it he talks about he mentions a man named Robert Pondiscio. I hope I pronounce his name right, who is a former public school teacher, and he's now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. And this fellow has written several essays and public remarks, and he's been sounding the alarm about the unbearable bleakness of American schooling. A trend that's predating what's going on in the world today. He says, "If you simply listen to the stories we tell students, a view of the world in which everything is broken, corrupt, dangerous, or doomed. But optimism, he argued, is an essential civic virtue. No society can expect its children to engage with a world that they think has already given up on them." This world hasn't. It has not given up on them. It's about optimism, that we shouldn't give up on anybody or anything. And it leads me to to what what happened over the weekend. It There was a spaceship that went to space and stayed there for 9 days. And I during the process of it, I don't know, okay, that's good. What are they doing? What's it all about? Why, you know. And then I got sort of intrigued by it. And then I watched the landing of this capsule. This tiny capsule with four human beings on it, which I would kill myself if being in such close proximity. And when it landed, I literally had tears in my eyes and screamed, "Yes!" Because all of a sudden it unleashed so much optimism in my life to me. I thought, "My goodness, things are not as bad as they seem. Look at this. We got these four individuals, a unique bunch of people, into they circled the moon, and they landed safely back on Earth. Joyful. Joyful. And to see the faces of children looking up into the sky, into the vast horizon, with smiles on their faces, optimistic. Let's talk about optimism, Doc. What say you?

My favorite. My favorite. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's talk about the space thing because it's very it's very interesting. Uh I mean, there's so many things we can talk about here. We'll just start with the spaceship for 1 second. Yeah. This is great. So, um there are lots of reasons to go back to the moon. Uh and I was listening to uh I think it was Bill Maher. I think I mentioned it to you earlier. He was talking about it. He thinks it's a waste of money. We should spend the money here. And I like Bill Maher. He's a very smart guy. I've not you know, I've never met him. I'd like to meet him one day, but but that's incorrect. That it's not a waste of money. In terms of just concrete things, there's all kinds of minerals, rare earth elements up there. We can mine them. Uh so we're not relying on China. Uh you can ship them back to Earth quite actually quite inexpensively, as it turns out. Pretty very cool technology. So, there are actually practical reasons to do it. So, and I always think you know, when when the people went out west, "What are you going out west for?" you know, in the in the in the early 18th century. "What are you going out west for?" you know, what's the point there? There's nothing there. Everything's here in the east. Why are we going? And of course, anytime there's there's pioneers, adventures, new things created, new technologies, new opportunities, blah blah blah blah blah. You know, to say it's just fine the way we are, and we shouldn't do these things, it's just it flies in the face of what we know from the history of the world. So, I disagree with him on that. But uh but this there's another part of it. The non-economic part of it, the non-practical part of it, which is what you talked about, that optimism. So, I looked at this and I went uh it's great. I love I love space stuff. I always love space stuff. I mean, when you saw the uh SpaceX rocket, you know, arms catch that rocket coming back, I mean, that's like that's unbelievable stuff, right?

Yeah. Uh So, but I looked at this and I went, "Well, we did this when we were kids. When you and I were kids, we watched this, right? We watched Yeah. I remember I you know, we were born a long time ago, but we were alive when President Kennedy said, "At the end of the decade, we will go to go to the moon and return safely." Right? Right. And we remember that. We were really little kids. So, I don't remember the actual speech, but I've seen it. But we were alive when when I remember um Shepard, Alan Shepard, going straight up into space. He went straight up. It came straight down, right? Didn't go around the moon, nothing. Nope. I remember when John Glenn went around the moon. I had the opportunity to meet John Glenn, which is really very one of the very cool. As you know, I was very close friends with one of the Gemini and Apollo astronauts. You and I became very close friends for many years, who unfortunately passed away a short time ago. But we lived through this, right? I'm going, What we What's the big deal? We did this 60 years ago, right? Yeah. 1969, we landed on the moon. It's almost 60 years ago, right? And we went around it. We we went to the moon the year before that or even uh before. So, we're talking almost 60 years, and why is it such a big deal? And I the light went on in my head in it, and I went, almost everybody who's alive today didn't see that. Yes. It's news to them. Yes. Because during their lifetime, we never did any of this cool stuff, right? And this is cool stuff. And they and and so of course, why were they so excited? You were excited for the You were a kid again because it's cool. There's so much crap in the world, the wars and this and that and the poverty and all whatever. All the stuff. And this is fun. And this is exciting. And this is optimistic. Look what mankind can do, right? So, that's so important that we have that. I think that Frank I'm going to read the Frank Bruni article. I didn't read it yet. Um But that's 100% right. We are teaching people the absolute wrong things. First of all, I have news for the world, which is that there's nothing new in the world. Nothing. Zero, right? All this has happened before, right? This is not the worst politics. It's not even close. This is not the greatest climate disaster. We've had other climate disasters in our in our history. You name it, it's happened, right? So, there's nothing new. This is and the the I was listening to a podcast this morning before we started, while I was working out, and they were talking about people in the 18th century, right around the time of the American Revolution, who were talking about end of times. Sound familiar, right? Right. Well, I'm sure people worried about end of times since the word end of the phrase end of times got created in any any language, right? People have always thought, "This is it. This is the end, right? The end of the planet. This is the end of our life. This is whatever." Okay. There's nothing new. There was nothing new. And so, you and I looked at the space photos and that's not new, either. But Right.

But for people who didn't see it, it was really new, right? And so, it's it's so cool so cool. So, with all the worry and hand-wringing about where we are on this Earth, the story of life hasn't changed one single bit. It's still about relationships. It's still about creating. It's still about uh enjoying the incredible uh world in which we live. The you know, we're in spring now. And you and I think I've talked about this. I talked about this every year. I look at a tree, and there's nothing on it when I go to sleep, and I wake up the next morning, and there's buds all over the tree. And I look at those buds, and I go to sleep, and the next morning, the buds are five times the size. And flowers exist where they didn't exist the night before. This is miraculous, right? Miraculous. And so, there's plenty of stuff to be to be optimistic about. Our relationships, our friendships. You talked about the four people in the space capsule. And they will be they will have a connection forever. Forever. They were together. They trained probably for a couple of years, so it's not like just one event. But so, they've known each other a long time. But but what really cemented this relationship is getting in that little tiny capsule together and flying around the moon and coming back. They'll never forget that, right? And they will be bonded forever because the most important thing we have are our relationships. If somebody had done that by him or herself, if one of them had gone, it would have been great. But it but it was magnified 100 times over by the fact that it was shared. It was shared by this intimate group of people who, you know, they were born in different places with, you know, different races, different religions, different everything. And all of a sudden, they're these in this tiny little capsule going around the moon. I know. Who could have Who could have foreseen that when they were 3 years old, right? Nobody. So, so there's so many cool things in the world that to be So, optimism is should be the natural reaction. You've heard me say this before. Inside every pessimist is an optimist begging to be free. Yeah. Right? Nobody wants to be a pessimist. And if we Now, like the stuff that you talked about, if we thrust this upon our children, how cruel. That's the cruelest thing you can do. You know, we had talked you know, a while back about the Stoics. And I just happened to be reading something about the Stoics, and I I found something that Lucius Seneca wrote. And um he said, "If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you needing is not to be in a different place, but to be a different person. In other words, we need to be optimistic. We need to think about Yes, exactly what you're saying. Nothing's new. There are things that are going to stress us out, but but we need to look and understand that Okay, this too shall pass. That happened before. It's not going to happen It's going to happen again. You know, I I'm I'm sort of getting to your mindset and and this whole notion of optimism versus pessimism. I think maybe that's it. Maybe we're too pessimistic. Maybe we have to Look at it Look at the other side. They went to see the other side of the moon. They saw the other side of the moon and they relate They showed us the other side of the moon. The photography was astounding. We got to see for the first time ever. So, there is something new. The far side of the moon. We saw something for the first time in history. We all got to see the far side of the moon. Well, they're not the first people to see the far side of the moon, by the way. But Well, who saw it? Well, they went around the moon before. We've been around the moon before. You have to go around the moon to get home. So

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but but but the pictures and the I mean it it it's

Yeah, okay, but it it it doesn't I see you Look, I was with you. I want you to I want you to read that quote one more time. The one you just read. All right. If you don't mind. I don't. If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you needing is not to be in a different place, but to be a different person. You need to be I'm going to extend that to You need to You need to have a different perspective. That's what meaning it That's what he means by being a different person.

Yes. Yes. Means by seeing it a different way. Yes. Exactly. That's pure aerial view. That's right. That's

That is pure aerial view. See it in a different way. Remove yourself from the stressful part of the situation, right? And see it for what it is. It's another event in time. It's another moment in time. All moments are equivalent. It's just another one. Every The more we practice, this is the more we see things this way. We go, "Okay." Your initial reaction is to get upset, stressed out. We talked about stress last week. Um This is what he's talking about. That's what Seneca is talking about. See it a different way. Become a different person meaning remove yourself. Become the disinterested observer. Understand that it's just another moment of your life, another moment in time. Accept it for that. Don't freak out about it. And and that's how you That's how you deal with the situation that by by becoming what he calls a different person. What I would say is just changing your perspective. Get to the aerial view and see it. That removes the stress. That puts it in the proper perspective. And so, getting back to the optimism question is that you can see any event in multiple ways. So, you can see an event um is a really good example. So, unfortunately in my life, in my career, I've seen many too many people succumb to illnesses at a young age. And I've seen too many young children lose their mothers or their fathers, right? And the If I would tell you that the event that I saw way too often that bothered me the most, that got me the most upset, was when a young woman developed breast cancer, but most people by the way most people now do not die of breast cancer. Most people now survive it a very very long time. But there have always been those cases and in in years past there were many many more of them of these young women uh who developed breast cancer at a very early age and it was very aggressive and left young children behind. And it would break my heart. It broke my heart for the young children. The obviously sad enough for the patient. I was, you know, I had the relationship with the patient, not with not with her family, but but I always thought I I saw felt so sad for those young children. So, now we're probably 20 30 years from from a lot of those things. And those those little kids are now grown up. And they probably have families of their own or relationships or careers or something. And they don't spend every day dwelling about I lost my mother when I was five, right? They probably hardly remember their mother sadly, but here I am left with this memory of the sadness of this young of these young children losing their mother and this young woman losing her life. And that still lingers with me. And then I have to remember, "Wait a minute. These kids are probably They're probably doing great in many of ways." Yep, they're probably having fruitful productive interesting lives. Each life is separate and must be lived individually. We've talked about this. And so, to me I go, "Well, maybe Why was I So, my my concern, my my degree of of of my What's the right word? How how upset I was, I needed to look in a different way, right? I needed to look and understand that this is only a moment of time and these and their lives would go on for these children and they would have relationships and events and activities and things would happen in their lives and they would have a full human life, whoever long they would live, right? So, I was stuck in the pessimistic part. And I forgot to look at the optimistic part, which is life goes on. Which is people people go through these events of loss and we've talked about this many times. There's no You don't We don't ever really lose anybody, but still, especially when you're young, it certainly feels that way. Uh And so, but there's another flip side of it. The flip side is that life will go on. That they will have the relationships in these lives and these cool events in their lives. They will have the equivalent of going around the moon. They will have these things happen in their lives. There's plenty of reason for optimism. So, what we we we have a choice. We can dwell on the things that bring us down and make us sad, but we can appreciate that the world is so much larger. There's so much more going on. That time will pass. That things will happen. And there's plenty of reason to gather this pessimism and grasp the optimism. Yeah, I I agree. I They go on a little bit more in the article by Bruni. He he talks about um what this professor this the teacher said. He said, "I need to communicate that for all the country's current trials, it still brims with opportunities. Its promise is greater than its woes. And a blurry future isn't the same as a bleak one. It just asks today's college students to be especially nimble and patient. And it demands that those of us who stand before them work extra hard to find an honest balance between uncomfortable reckonings and reasons not to despair." It's true, isn't it? And again, it's it's how we talk to young people as well. So, let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, we're teaching them all the wrong things. We've talked about this a lot. We are teaching young people the wrong things. We talked When we talked about stoicism, we should be teaching them these things about living a virtuous life and how that is how you get to be have a fulfilling life. You know, you talked for a second there about our country and all these things and if you're if you just read the news, you know, uh we're just filled with terrible people doing terrible things and we're selfish and we're greedy and we're mean and whatever, right? And of course, uh That that's that's only a little tiny part of the story. And I'll give you something that happened to me recently. So, you know, I I teach other doctors uh a particular procedure a few times a year uh at a course and the majority of the doctors, these are people who have finished their training. They're all now fully full-fledged grown-up doctors of various ages. They could be in the beginning of their career, they could be in the middle or at the end of their career. Doesn't matter. And most are from the United States, but there's always some from around the world, right? Always some from uh South America, Australia, New Zealand, uh Scandinavia. I've had them from everywhere, right? Everywhere. So, and Africa, right? So, during the last course I just taught a couple of weeks ago, there were uh there were two two women who came from a South American country. Uh they're doctors and they had they had uh gotten these H-1B visas from a doctor out in the western part of the United States to come work at his institution on these H-1B visas. And they came with their families. Uh these are obviously highly educated people, right? They came with their families and they came from a country that was not one that you would associate being a third world country. It was not one of those countries you would say, "Oh, well, who wouldn't want to get out of there?" No. This country that you wouldn't necessarily think that at all. And I was talking to them during the course of which is a two-day course. So, we're together like for 20 half an hour long time, right? Uh all of us. Uh there's about 25 people uh there. And and I was talking to these two women. I said, "So, when you're What do you think you're going to do? You're going to go back home?" And they looked at me and went, "No. Not if we unless we have to." I said, "You want to stay here?" And they said, "Yeah, yeah, we definitely want to stay here." I said, "Why? With all that's going on in this country and you know, I'd be I'm surprised you feel that way." And they said, "Oh, no, no, no. No, no. You know, you guys all paint this terrible picture, but let me tell you, this is still one of the best places in the in the world to live and the opportunity is still great and it's safer and you have laws that people generally follow and it's a much way better place to live." And these two women came from I said, you know, I I won't tell you the country, but it's a country you go, "Really? They came from there?" Right? So, So, so that's why you can look at it You can always look at things as the worst or when you're a stranger looking at something from afar, you go, "I don't know what you're talking about. This is way better than I have it." But the same thing occurs in our lives. We can always look at something say, "That's terrible." But we can also hop into the aerial view and go, "Wait a minute. No, no, no. This is all part of a great story. We're part of a great story. This is such an opportunity to live a human life. It is an amazing opportunity to live a human life. Think about it. We laugh. We have We love. We have friendships. We have relationships of all types. We meet people. We learn things. We We get good at things. We smell the flowers. We see the sunsets. You know, you know, we see shooting stars. We You know, there's so many cool things in life. It's a gift. This is an absolute gift. Yes, there's going to be things that are not so much fun, but take them in stride. Take them as part of of story. They all come together. But don't lose sight of the fact this is an unbelievable opportunity to live a life. You got a gift. You you won by just showing up. So, there's always a better way to look at things, and I think a more correct way to look at things. I agree. I agree, and I think that's why this whole um 9 days of of four bodies going into space, I think it's why it's captivated the nation. I really do. And I will say something else I find interesting. You and I prior to this podcast were talking about the Masters, the golf tournament. And I think that, too, captivates the nation. And I think the World Series captivates the nation, and the the Super Bowl. And I have I have a thought as to why it would all this That's when we become a sense of community. It's something that we're all as one looking at and cheering on, whether we're we're for the the Dodgers or the Yankees. There There's a competition, but we're all rooting for something. And what it is, it's a collective. It doesn't matter which team. We're not necessarily It doesn't matter which team cuz you've been talking about You don't care who wins the Masters. But, collectively we as a nation are watching the Masters. I watched it yesterday. I don't know a thing about it. But, it was the collective joy of watching something where um we we all have a stake in it, whether it's peripheral or whether we actually do care about which which player wins. I think it's about optimism. We're all looking at something optimistically and saying, ah Let's put the politics aside. Let's not worry about what's going on in the rest of the world. Let's focus on something good for a change. I look, it's definitely about community. I'm sure you're right. I think you're spot-on, which is you know, which is why we watch these four astronauts. They've They become a family, right? Right. We all yearn for this. We all want to be part of something, and we want to be so out of something good. Like Why do people join gangs? You know, they join gangs cuz they want to be part of something. They have nothing. Right. They don't find it in their communities and their families and so on. They're searching. Okay? I'll hang out with these guys. We're all part of a team. We have the same logo. We We wear the same jacket. We put the same tattoos in the same place. You know, unfortunately we do bad things sometimes, but you get the idea to be part of something. You know, when you watch something like like the Masters or any or the World's or the World Series or the World Cup, right? So, the World Cup, we can generalize this to the whole world. We can take it out of America. The World Cup is the most popular sporting event in the world by far. Nothing's closer. Nothing comes close. We have our ups, we have our downs, but we're we're experiencing all the emotions of of of human life together. We're doing it together. We used to watch TV together, remember? Every Sunday night the Ed Sullivan Show was on at 8:00. Every I think it was it whatever time it was. Everybody watched it together. You know, when Seinfeld came on, everybody watched it together. Next day they talked about it. Whatever the show was. This We all want to be part of this community. It's so There's something that we know. We know we're part of something. Everybody knows we're part of something. Now, we're not just part of our country or state or sports team, we're part of something way bigger. It's called humanity. We're all connected. We all come from the same place, and we all have this sense inside of us. And that's what gives That's what gives us optimism. We want to be together. So, I don't know if you saw this. I was watching um you know, when they whenever they have all these uh great sporting events, whether it be the Super Bowl, the World Series, the World Cup, there's always these segments on, you know, the human interest segments about a certain personality, right? Oh, and those are so much fun. The Olympics, right? At all of these things focus on like Lionel Messi or Ronaldo in soccer or, you know, one of the great gymnasts in uh in in the Olympics or whatever. So, yeah, we watch all these little things. So, there was one yesterday I saw about one of the golfers who's now older who won the who won the Masters twice. And he's talking about his best friend and how close he was to this guy and going through all this together was so meaningful to him. And I you know, I didn't I didn't know who he was talking about, right? Cuz I probably popped in the middle. And he goes on and on and on for like 10 minutes about this relationship. And then they show a clip. And it's his caddy. And it's this black guy. Right? And this this golfer was relatively short, and and the the caddy's this big, tall black guy. He's probably at that point either older or similar in age. And you could see the love between these two people, right? They just love each other, right? And they were Now, they grew up completely differently. Obviously they the uh the white golfer had a If you want to call it a privileged life or whatever, he's playing golf, right? You know, not everybody gets to play golf. And you see and it's easy to make a statement, oh well, this is the asymmetry of our world, and the black guy was this No. But, they didn't think that. At that point these guys went through their careers, and maybe at some point they did, but these guys clearly loved each other, right? If that doesn't make you feel good, right, then you're missing the whole point of why you're here on this planet. That's what it's about. It's about these relationships. It's about those four astronauts in the in the in the tiny little cramped quarters together for for 10 days. It's about these relationships. This is why these events are so meaningful is we feel part of something. We're together, whether it's an interpersonal relationship between two people or community or nation or the whole world, right? This is what we want. This is what we seek. This is what brings us so much joy. We know it's supposed to be this way. We know we're not supposed to be separated. We know it's wrong to mistreat people, right? We know we should all be getting along in one way or another. So, this is where the optimism comes from. That's why we have a war, like World War I, World War II, the wars now, and then they end. They always end, right? And you go back and you know, now you can go to Vietnam for vacation, right? And when we were growing up, the last place you wanted to end up was Vietnam, right? And so, we realize how ridiculous all these things are cuz we end up being friends with the people we hated, right? There's no doubt in my mind that one day the Jews and the Arabs are going to be best friends, right? This is going to happen. I hope so. Maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen at some point in the history of the world. Oh, it it will probably happen in our lifetime. It could happen in our lifetime. I expect you to live a long time. It doesn't matter. The point is we feel we're part of something. We want to be part of something. We sense that. This is where This is the essence of optimism. This is the essence that we're part of something, that they're we're here for a reason. This is what we need to This is why Frank Rooney's dead on on this one. We need to teach our children this. Okay, bad stuff's going to happen. That's only a tiny part of the story. There's a much bigger story. Right. I mean, these poor four astronauts, they really got to know each other with a broken toilet. I'm just saying. I don't know how they did it. Oh god. Let me I want to We're running out of time. I want to end with um something, and then I you'll have the final word, but I get get back to this um the astronauts and what's going on. Troy D. Allen was an Army chaplain in Afghanistan when he began intentionally spending time outside at night. He knew little about astronomy or can't constellations, but found that simply staring up into the sky helped him find peace in a period of his life otherwise marked by turmoil. Mr. Allen now heads a program at Utah State University that facilitates camping trips for teenagers and others to contemplate the night sky and their place underneath it. His campers set up their tents, then lie back and watch the stars come out. At first time moves slowly for young people accustomed to clicking through life at the pace of TikTok. But, gradually they warm to the experience. What happens to humans when we encounter vastness, silence, beauty, and mystery, Mr. Allen said. It's the recalibrating of our lives. After the stars come out, Mr. Allen's group goes on a bike goes on a hike with the Milky Way stretched like a banner above them. Then they stop again for a long time and look up. That's what we all need to do. We just need to stop and look up. I love that. I love that. I'll tell you a quick We have another minute. I'll tell you a quick story. So, my wife and I were out west at one of the national parks, and my wife has an particular affinity for dark skies. She loves this. And so, we went there happened to be at that particular time. It has to be in the right place where there's no clouds and the moon is not full, certainly, and it's in its one of early phases. Uh or or it's quite It has sky has to be quite dark, right? And we happened to hit it perfectly. It was cold, but we all bundled up, four of us, and we went out, and there was uh these um astronomers from one of the local universities had set up telescopes in this big parking lot. You're not allowed to have any lights cuz there's some red light. Um So, it's really pitch black. And so, the the the uh telescopes were one was aimed at Jupiter, one was aimed at Saturn. I don't know what they were aimed at. It was cool. But, that wasn't the coolest part. You could just look up and see this dark sky and see the Milky Way. Mhm. I had never in my life seen the Milky Way with my naked eye. Never. You know, I've been in planetariums and stuff, but I'd never seen it. Nor had my wife. And we were mesmerized. Absolutely mesmerized. Now, remember 200 years ago what year was this? Probably Yeah, probably about 200 years ago. That was it. Every night was like that. Yes. Everywhere in the world cuz there were no electricity. There was no lights, right? So, the sky was always dark. This is what people grew up with. This is what they were used to, right? We've lost that, unfortunately. But, when you when when you get the opportunity to do that, it does change the way you look at at the world and the way you look at life. It's a beautiful thing. It is. It is. Makes us optimistic. We should all just relax and look up and realize how small we are among the vastness of the earth. One more One more quick story for you.

please. So, I was at I was part of a large medical group, a relatively large medical group, and we're having a meeting one day. This is many, many years ago. And something was going on in in the in the practice in our practice. There was a problem, and they were talking about it, and I said, well, you know, there's another way to look at this." And I gave some, you know, pie in the sky way to look at this as I usually do. And one of my partners looked over at me and he said, "How is it that you find find seem to find a silver lining in every black cloud?" And that's kind of the way I look at the world and it is such a better way to live. It is so much and and and there's reasons like we talked about that. There's reasons to feel that way. It's not made up. It's not artificial. It's the It's It's the Milky Way in the sky. It's the way the world really is.

And we need we need to really focus on that a lot more in our lives. I'm glad Frank wrote that article. Me, too. And I'm glad we had this conversation today. Uh we are out of time. I thank you. Last word? Last word is thank you everybody for listening and we'll see you next time. You got it. Peace.