Tragic Optimism




Tragic Optimism...there it is, another one of those paradoxical couplings! But it speaks to me somehow, resonates really, as our time of disorientation and disillusion continues in lengths for which we have no comparison. Except perhaps in history as in slavery or holocaust or the Bible as in the Exodus!
Tragic optimism is a term coined by Victor Frankl which came to life after 9/11 when research on resilience found a strange and strong meaning in these words, a synergism in their inherent tension. While telling similar stories and confessing similar emotions that which separated the resilient from the not so resilient was a capacity to make tragically optimistic meaning of the horrific event, to acknowledge pain and tragedy while holding hope, the thing which does not disappoint, the thing with feathers!
Tragic optimism then seems to be much like the Christian virtue which Jesus modeled of holding sorrow and love gently together. It is a healthier psychological framework of dealing with reality with just enough denial or defense rather than total blocking and toxic festering.Tragic optimism is the process whereby we make meaning of even diabolical tensions. 
During this pandemic and especially as we emerge into a different world with different ways of inhabiting it and relating to each other, we need to acknowledge the grief and loss, stay in the disillusionment, just long enough to gain our balance and let the light and love which foster the optimism part infiltrate us. 
Never has the poem by Leonard Cohen been recited more often; in fact its title might be replaced with Tragic Optimism!
Ring the bells which still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in. 

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