“There are two sides to every coin, but you can only see one of them at one time.”

I’ve read this somewhere on Quora, I think. It’s a pretty simple quote, and like with all the simple things, it rings absolutely true. We do tend to see the world in two poles: heads and tails, right and left, light and dark, half empty and half full. And of course, since we’re used to seeing things through this theory of polarity, we tend to see the poles even when they aren’t there. Either our life is filled with shiny things and deep and beautiful experiences, or it’s a living nightmare.

Media is very good at showing this duplicity. Advertisements show the cleanest floors, the whitest smiles, the tastiest foods. You switch the channel, and hear of sexual assaults and armed robberies gone wrong. On social media we either see young ladies walking on sunlit flax fields, or hectares of tropical forests burning.

In this black and white world we, members of the gray race of humanity, end up chasing every small bit of white like our life depends on it. Or maybe we follow the dark side, try to prove all those positivity addicts that they’re wrong, only to destroy ourselves in the process.

Which one is the true way of seeing things, then? Well, it’s probably neither. Despite our tendency to categorize and see colors, the world’s all a mass of gray of infinite tonalities. A few things look almost completely black or white, sure, but it’s never completely one or the other. In order to have a better understanding of our lives we should start thinking more, well, grayly, assuming things from both the perspectives of pessimism and optimism.

The best of both worlds

Star Wars taught us that each side of the Force has its own perks. That’s the same for optimism and pessimism (except, y’know, pessimism doesn’t necessarily lead to hurting and killing). Let’s see what some of these perks are.

Optimism
Being in a positive state puts us into a framework where we can always take something valuable out of a situation. This makes us good-humored, and happy. It makes us glad to help people around us, filling our lives with meaning and respect from others (because who feels sympathy for a grumpy fellow?). And even if nothing turns out well in the short run, it will in the long if we have the love of our friends and family on our side. We’re social animals after all.

Pessimism
Most pessimists prefer to identify themselves as realists, and they’re partly right. Life almost never meets our expectations. Knowing this allows us to analyze and face problems, and prepare ourselves for the worst. Sometimes it’s much better to acknowledge the possibility of failure than hoping it won’t happen.

Carving our way to balance

If the path in the middle grants all this awareness and respect, why do most people lean one way or the other? Let me answer your question with another question: have you ever tried balancing a ruler on top of a pencil?

That’s right. Balance is never easy, especially for our brain. The most powerful organ in our body has an obsession with patterns. Whenever a thought is made or an action is performed, the brain shapes itself accordingly, allowing us to learn a new skill or build a habit; but it also gives us a harder time to shrug off vices, and when we’re sad or angry or resentful it makes us feel entitled to be even sadder or angrier or more resentful.

So how do we manage to stay in the path between optimism and pessimism without ‘leaning?’ Simple. By encorporating both black and white in the same thought.

Let me explain by proposing you a small thought experiment. It’s a modified version of an exercise that I found on Tim Ferris’s The 4-Hour Work Week. You’ll need pen and paper for this one, so grab ‘em and then come back here.

Ready?

1. Write down a bad thing that could happen to you today. Start with something that’s small but could still ruin your day. Say you’re waiting tables when you suddenly trip and throw a bowl of soup on a customer’s head. The more you put on paper, the more you can practice.

2. Write down any possible upside to that experience that you can find. If you don’t find any, dig deeper—exercising your creativity is key here.
My upsides to the soup bowl thing are:

– That’ll make a real good story in a year (or two)
– Some of the patrons might even feel sympathy for me, allowing me to recover quicker from the embarrassment
– If the victim is an unpleasant person, they won’t come back—one less nuisance to worry about
– Every embarrassment I live through is another one I won’t have to deal with
– I’ll be more careful next time when carrying soups around the dining hall.

This exercise will take you ten minutes at most, but doing it from time to time can help you stretch on both ends of the spectrum.

The neverending story

In any case, whether you’ll follow my exercises or not, finding the path in the middle is a natural consequence of growing up. Many things happen to us in our lives, both good and bad, and they usually come in a pattern similar to stories (which maybe is the reason why we relate so much to stories). We start from a moment of comfort, hit an obstacle, then we overcome the obstacle with new knowledge under our belt. Going through the cycle enough times, we learn to appreciate both the good and the bad. We learn to use pessimism for keeping our ego in check, optimism to keep us confident; pessimism to accept that mistakes will always happen, optimism to see those mistakes as happy accidents.

So next time you find a coin down the street, do me a favor and look at both its sides before putting it in your pocket.