Today’s letter is on the subject of optimism.  My wife Gayle, who is my inspiration for just about everything I do, saw me tapping away at my laptop and asked what I was doing.  I told her I was writing about optimism.  Her response?  “Need a ghostwriter for that?”

OK, so I am often serious, cautious and realistic.  But, the answer to her question is definitely, “Not yet!”

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Every beginning, or at least every human beginning, had a prelude – something that led to the person saying, “OK, I’m starting X.” Between the prelude and the moment X is started is the preparation.  Plans are made, ground is laid and prayers are prayed, during which the Beginner tries to do everything right so things start without a hitch.  “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” declared the Scottish poet Robert Burns.  He had a point, but the moral of his poem “To a Mouse” is that, in spite of things going awry, onward we must go.

And so, as I prepare for the next phase of my career, I have embarked upon such a beginning.  I am learning a lot, and some of those lessons are more difficult than others.  Regardless, what awaits me is a future I know will be bright.

These are difficult times for a lot of people.  I won’t bore you with the details. There are a thousand news and opinion sources for that.  What strikes me as most telling about the human spirit, and the American spirit in particular, is that in the face of all this doom and gloom, we are still optimistic.  In his April 23, 2009 “Political Animal” column in the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen wrote:

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RIGHT TRACK/WRONG TRACK…. President Obama’s approval rating in the new AP poll is at 64%, which largely in line with other recent national surveys. The more interesting number, however, relates to public optimism.

For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public’s mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future.

Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.

The AP poll found that 48% of Americans say the country is headed in the right direction, up eight points from February, while 44% believe the nation is on the wrong track.
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What Benen is reporting is huge.  We as Americans have returned to being optimistic, at a time when we are being told the sky is falling.  That is terrific news!

Our greatest successes as a nation have come when the chips were down.  We won an improbable victory against an overwhelming adversary to obtain our independence.  George Washington became the Father of our Country because his will – his undying optimism – carried a ragtag army of patriots to a victory against a British force that was substantially larger, had bigger guns, and wore those spiffy red uniforms!

At the end of the war, we were a mess of a civilization, with little money and a society fragmented with battle lines that would ultimately lead to the Civil War.  There was every reason to believe our new nation would founder on its own internal discord.  Then, we adopted a Constitution that has lived and guided our nation for 220 years.   To think a group of old guys in funny coats could agree on anything took amazing optimism.  Through the Constitutional Conventions and the long, tortured road toward ratification, our Founding Fathers kept pushing, knowing our greatest days were ahead.

Of course, the Constitution did not solve the North-South problem, which was tied very closely to the issue of slavery.  The Civil War became the most horrifying conflagration in our history.  Immediately after the war, the country was a disaster.  We were torn apart as a people.  An entire generation of young men had vanished from the battlefields into graveyards that scarred our land.  Our greatest leader had been assassinated and replaced by a much lesser man (Andrew Johnson, the first President impeached and not convicted).  Reconstruction sowed the seeds of an enduring enmity between North and South that still persists, although I think we can say the tide has turned on that.  Yet, we did not stop moving forward.  We built and expanded the country, not just to the Pacific Ocean but all points in between.

The stories of American grit, determination and optimism are so common, we have come to expect them.  Whether we were conquering polio, defeating fascism or going to the moon, we Americans see only challenges, not obstacles.  Just as we overcame the Great Depression, we will survive this latest economic downturn and come out stronger than ever.

Many great business success stories came out of the Depression.  Sixteen out of the thirty current members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average were started during a recession!  We will see many more success stories that begin as we climb out of our current recession.  Keep your fingers crossed.  I am!