The Secret Life of Optimists

Okay, show of hands: how many people here have seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)? I have several friends who hate it, several who adore it, and several who look at me with confused but polite expressions on their faces when I ask if they've seen it.

On a basic level, Walter Mitty is a film about a hard-core day-dreamer in love with a girl at work he's never spoken to, who finds himself saddled with discovering the baffling whereabouts of a vital photograph ("Quintessence") missing from his workplace. We all like to pull for the underdog, especially one with a heart and imagination as endearing as Walter's. But at its core, the film is a celebration of imagination, optimism, friendship, art, adventure...all the things that make up the delightful parts of life.Walter Mitty works at Life Magazine and the company's motto will always inspire me:

"To see the world,
Things dangerous to come to,
To see behind walls,
Draw closer,
To find each other,
And to feel.
That is the purpose of life."

 I suppose the reason I love The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (apart from the stunning and artistic way the film was shot) is because it is a story about a person like me. A person with an imagination that colors his world brighter than usual. A person who has more than once spaced out in a conversation, totally enveloped in What Could Happen. A person who sees possibility everywhere, in everyone. A person who has within his mind, a million outcomes of a million situations and is poised just so, waiting to see which will really come to pass and where it might take him.

This first week of 2015 has been amazing. I am not exactly sure why except that I have lived every day with this glorious sensation of Just Around the River Bend practically sparking out of me. 2015 is, so far, an open year. I don't have many plans. Those I do have are just sketches, waiting to be filled with color by the adventures God lets me stumble across. Exciting things are lurking in the corners. I just know it. I don't have a reason for knowing it, but somehow I do. Seriously, put away your raised eyebrows. There are no secrets here. Just a flush on my cheeks and my heart beating a little smidgen faster than usual because something is coming. The unknown is all around me and there's something in the wind that makes me so terribly excited for this year. And yet, I feel a little like Jane and Michael Banks after Bert has done his rigmarole of: "You think...you...wink, you do a double-blink, you close your eyes and...."

Jane cocks her head, looks at Bert and says:

 "Is something s'posed to happen?"

That's how I feel right now. Is something s'posed to happen? Will it? I have my eye on several situations in friends' lives that could bloom into straight-up, real time fairy-tales or epic-saga adventures. I'm waiting for the next part of the story, conscious that any moment could catapult them (and me, vicariously) into a crazy, practically unheard-of new world. In my own life, things move along as usual. I spend my days doing life in technicolor. The people at the grocery-store are not just people. I mean, they are just people but not just people. I believe in the rich old truth that my life is a story and each component is part of that tale. Therefore, the man behind me in line at the grocery store could turn out to be important. The lady who cuts in front of me in traffic. The bank teller I saw twice in one day. The man in the window of the National Press Club Building. The woman whose package I rescued off the metro who I finally got back in contact with. My brain goes wild with the possibilities. When those people don't give me something memorable, I remedy the situation by doing something creative for them to remember. If I can't meet That Person, I'll be That Person. Call it what you will (fate, destiny, a horse), there's never a dull moment in this brain. I know bad stuff happens in life, but I know good stuff happens too, and it's the good stuff, the grace-moments in life that I wait for. They're there. They're everywhere. Some people just don't look for them or notice.

But living this secret life of brilliant hues has a flip-side: when life does turn out to be normal and the threads running across it seem to be weaving an average graham-colored bit of the tapestry, the heart-racing, flush-cheeked, eyes-sparkling existence begins to feel like a pacing tiger in a cage. I'm ready for the adventure. Where is it? I'm keeping a weather eye out for the next interesting person, the next impossibly beautiful moonrise, the next rose-red leaf silvered with frost, the next place to send an anonymous letter, the next way to secretly give a quiet blessing. It's an odd sort of discontentment, waiting for the peacock blues and currant reds and new-wheat greens in the tapestry of life to cover the graham-colors. When they don't come on their own, I make them myself, content in mixing dyes from the bits of everyday magic around me. I'm content with waiting, with letting wild hopes fly through my fingers each day, for there are always more hopes to be spent tomorrow. It's a luxury that optimists like myself can easily spare. But I will admit that our outlook can be exhausting,  for we spend hope at an extravagant rate and if it's a harsh master who would call it wasteful, our output is certainly tiring. I discussed this topic briefly with a friend this evening:

"Did you know it is slightly exhausting being an imaginative optimist? I mean, what's more tiring and frustrating: waiting for nothing to happen or waiting for anything to happen? In the first case you at least are fairly ready to stay where you are all your life. In the latter, you have the most delicious sense of 'any day now.'"

...or "any person now," or "any moment now," or "any page now," or "any conversation now," or "any query now." I don't believe the hope is poorly spent. I would always far rather be the optimist waiting with shining eyes and a laugh caught in her throat because anything could happen, than the pessimist who pulls on his tan trench-coat and trudges to work through snow whose beauty he can't even see because he can think of nothing but what a mess it'll make of the roads. I would always rather be That Person than a thousand Anyone Elses. I would always rather be a half-short, past-plump girl who makes generous messes in the kitchen than the tall, slender model who can't allow herself a slice of sourdough toast. I would always rather be the girl sleepy-eyed and smiling from an overdose of well-marked books than the frowning, tired-eyed girl who gave up reading because her schedule didn't allow it. I'd always rather wake up believing with my whole heart that impossible things can happen than going to bed each night satisfied that nothing did.

So let the tiger pace; it's striped and tawny and beautiful. Let people pass me by; they'll remember I smiled their direction. Let real photographers buy cameras; I just ask a small, friendly moment to capture the fragile beauties with my (now contentedly outdated) iPhone. Let real artists paint masterpieces; I just want my little, dusty watercolors and a brush not losing too many bristles.

Welcome to The Secret Life of Optimists, in Technicolor, 2015.