Poptimism - a practical philosophy

By Dennis Lowery

My personal (and business) philosophy:

Never hesitate to believe that there is good in the world and that the bad is just something that comes with life and you have to deal with it when it appears.

I believe that life gives us tremendous opportunities.  I also know that it gives us challenges that can sometimes seem insurmountable.  The thing of it is that success in life (or so I believe) is all in how you react to what happens to you.  As Rudyard Kipling put it in his poem "If":

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, 
And treat those two impostors just the same;

By that I believe he means deal with things evenly and in proportion. Take the bad with the good and understand that you will encounter both in life.

The Navy has a phrase "take an even strain".

While originally it was intended for sailors who were handling lines (the ropes used to moor ships to a pier or that were used when handling a transfer of some object or person between two ships underway) so that they would not pull too hard or slack off too much (both could result in an accident or injury). It also came to have a similar meaning, at least to me and many others, to not over or under react.  Success in life requires we come up with the right level or response more times than not.  That right level of response is something that we all have to figure out as appropriate for us in the context of our situation.

With that in mind, and knowing that life deals out good and bad to all of us ... my personal philosophy came to be one of "poptimism" ... a touch of pessimism (caution) and optimism mixed together.  I try to take an "even strain" in all matters.

And as Kipling put near the closing of "If", if you can deal well with most things that go on in life:

Then Yours is the Earth and all that is in it.