“I am not an optimist. I am a very serious possibilist.”
Hans Rosling, Factfulness
I have long admired optimists because I am most definitely not one. I love the idea of being optimistic, but the mindset is so foreign to me. It doesn’t quite feel like that mindset leaves a place to incorporate my natural worries and observations.
But Hans Rosling’s concept of possibilist? That feels entirely, well, possible for me to adopt.
Rosling explains it in Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think like this, “It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful.” 💛
[Font inspired by: @thegraytergood]