Frankly Speaking-Life is Beautiful

"Life is Beautiful" showed me the true meaning of realistic optimism. Frankl discussed this concept, tragic optimism, in "Man's Search For Meaning." Any rational person can see that at any given moment the likelihood of something good happening is low. Usually bad things happen because people generally aren't very nice to the vast majority of other people. But if everyone lived their lives in the mindset of eternal pessimism related to events then nothing would get done. I believe that humans are all optimistic and that optimism has to get beaten out of them by the pain of the world around them. Frankl accounts for this when he discusses getting through suffering in a concentration camp. Those who started smoking their cigarettes had given up on their optimism. They have had their eternal optimism beaten out of them. That optimism is hope and hope for a better life is the reason for living. Life is driven by goals, which Frankl talks about in his discussion of logotherapy.

In "Life is Beautiful," the father is happy because he sees that love is present in life and it is attainable. He finds love and he knows that he will always have it with him. Frankl discusses the eternal nature of love, too. Love is one of the purposes of life because it is the only emotion that goes beyond reason. That is the true nature of optimism, overcoming reason with hope. No, pessimists, broken people, hateful cynics, something nice probably won't happen in the next few minutes. Yes, I know that people do awful things, but people also fall in love and enjoy that more than anything in the world. Louis CK has a great line about optimism: "You know what an optimist is? An optimist is someone who thinks: 'Hey maybe something nice will happen!'"I love Louis, but he is not right here. I used to think of optimism this way and recognized how blinding it is for people who call themselves optimists. But really optimism is natural. We all want life to be easier, happier. That's why the father in "Life is Beautiful" lied to his son. He didn't want him to lose his optimism. Hoping for a happier life is natural and if someone decides to stop hoping for life to get better then they are lost to pessimism. Realistic thought processes are optimistic because we can realize that we can always overcome our situations to find meaning through love or some amount of joy.