Quick Note on "A Society of Commentators"

After telling E about my previous blog, he brought up a great point.  He said, "You know, after knowing you for a while now, I don't think I would really call you an optimist.  It's just that you're really nice..."  And so began an interesting discussion on what that looks like in our culture.  And I think he is right - a lot of times niceness or happiness is translated into optimism to those that we don't know very well.  Not that it is a negative thing to be optimistic, I am speaking mainly to the previously discussed misconception that optimistic people are less deep or naive because of their positive outlook on life.  In our culture I think there are a lot of people who come across as very optimistic or positive, but very well may not be optimists at all but are just very nice.  The reality is, the depth that people get to know each other just is not what it once was in our culture.  We've become very polite but not very deep, I would say even in the Church this is truer than it should be.  Anyway, it is an interesting topic that I am keeping in mind as a meet new people - to remember that we are always more complex than we come off at first, and I'm among many that needs to get better at getting to know people on a deeper level.