The optimist: one man's search for the brighter side of life by Laurence Shorter

"There's a lot of problems, there always have been - but somehow we eventually get it right." - Bill Clinton

"It's not going to be OK but that's OK." - Laurence Shorter

Laurence Shorter is feeling uneasy with the amount of pessimism that is perpetuating through our society. Every time he opens a newspaper or turns on the radio he finds another BAD news. He takes to the road to find the Jump out of Bed Factor (JBF) in the morning and to to fix his messed up life. He's going to save the world with the optimism that he is going to pinpoint and crystallise to jet hid name to the world stage.

His plan is simple:
1. Learn how to jump out of bed in the morning.
2. Secure personal happiness.
3. Save the world.

On long journety of many travelling and meeting of many optimist, there is much planning and ordeals. All these, at times, bring much humour. For instance the list,

"THINGS WE FEEL REALLY DEPRESSED ABOUT"
global warming
species death
cancer
the decline of society into fragmentary sub-cultures without any common sense of community
War on terror
.
.
.
Victoria Beckham
the absence of any sort of tangible, interventionist deity

Most moments, it seems that Shorter is in denial of his true inclination towards pessimism because he mopes quite a bit but continue to claim to himself that he is a optimist at heart. However, it also shows that how fragil optimism is under the difficulties that we may face. His journey towards optimism is blurry and he comes in touch with all disciplines from science, statisitcs, religion and new age beliefs. Shorter meets people so profoundly happy that it's annoying. For a large portion of his journey, he focused on visualisation, projection and cosmic ordering. At the same time, he battles Zara, his 'girlfriend' which he come to know during this journey. Zara anchors herself in various spiritual teachings and believe that relationship are illusional and failure to see that would bring about suffering.

With all these jumble ups, nevertheless, shorter found the answer for himself. He learnt that 'we'll always make mistakes. There's always going to be bad news. Some things will get better, and some things will get worse. that's OK. It doesn't bother me anymore. You just have to keep the plates spinning. thing are OK as they are.'

"The world is perfect."

I choose Jesus over optimism.