This past weekend my mother in law turned 80. The timing was perfect for most family members to be vaccinated so we could gather together to celebrate. While strugglng with some back issues that have slowed her down of late, she is a person who I feel confident will have many more years of joyful living ahead of her. She is truly one of the most optimistc people I know and will embrace each year as a blessing. Watching her raise her glass to toast her life got me thinking aout all the benefits, both psychologically and physically, that come with being such an optimist.

Research has consistently linked optimism and overall health and longevity.  Optimistic thinkers have lower rates of hypertension, heart disease, lower cancer risks, and lower rates of overall mortality.  One large study published in 2019 (research from Harvard and Boston University) determined that optimists have a life span 11% to 15% longer than average and are more likely to live to age 85 or older!  And this statistic holds true regardless of socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and healthy habits.  One reason believed to underlie this trend is that optimists, when faced with a situation, believe that they can change the outcome, therefore engaging in more proactive behavior in response to a negative experience or diagnosis.

Optimists also tend to have long lasting relationships as well.  According to studies at Stanford University, this holds true even if only one member of the relationship is an optimist.  Optimism leads to a greater sense of perceived support from a partner, which helps couples feel an investment in resolving conflicts.  Optimists also seemed to have the effect of making their partner’s more optimistic and helped their partners be healthier.  Even in work relationships, optimists have better job security and higher job satisfaction. And when faced with hardship or setbacks, optimists tend to bounce back faster and use it to recommit to a goal.

So when reading all of these benefits, if you’re feeling pessimistic about your optimism, here is some good news.  Optimism is a trait that can be learned and developed.  According to Kings College of London, only 25% of optimism is based on inherited factors.  According to research on positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania (go Quakers), anyone can learn to become more optimistic.  Researchers from Penn as well as Johns Hopkins offer these tips to improve your outlook.  Smile more.  Smiling, even fake smiling, reduces heart rate and blood pressure during stressful situations and increases your sense of well being.  Reframe.  When you are in a difficult situation, see if you can find the silver lining.  For example when stuck in traffic, instead of focusing on what you can’t control, think of what the time can offer you, such as listening to some new music or calling a friend (using blue tooth of course).  Have a learning mindset.  Think of challenges and hardships as opportunities for learning and growth.  Gratitude.  Each day take notice of the good things you have in your life, no matter how small.   

It helps to think of optimism as less of a fixed personality and more of a mindset or thinking habit.  At first it may seem like work to shift from the negative to the positive, but with practice, you can indeed look at the full half of the glass instead of the empty half.  And in time, perhaps we can become more like my mother in law, Enid.  Not only will you notice the full half of the glass, but you will drink it up and refill it again and again.

I used to feel a bit of heartache when my mother would buy me a carrot cake each year for my birthday.  Because I had liked it as a kid, she continued to believe it was my favorite.  She never asked me if my preference had changed over the many years and I never felt it was right to correct her.  But now that she’s gone, I often find myself craving carrot cake on every occasion she’s no longer here with me to celebrate.  I miss having that person who not only remembered what I liked as a child, but who so stubbornly sought to preserve her role in taking care of me in that special motherly way.

A mother’s love is complicated.  From my own experience as a daughter and from what hours of working with many young people has taught me, most sons and daughters long to be seen and accepted by their mothers for who they are.  And what seems like such a simple thing to offer your child, whom you adore and would give your life for, however, ends up being so difficult, ripe with misunderstanding and disappointment, potentially leading to years of quiet sorrow.  In living through my own trials and failures in parenting, I have come to appreciate the truly impossible task of clearing out your own opinions, desires, and perspectives in order to be the all loving, all knowing, and all accepting mother figure we like to think we could be.

As mothers, to begin with, we were born and grew up in a completely different generation than our children.  The world was so different politically and socially than what our children experience, it’s impossible to know what it is like for them.  And some mother’s even come from a very different culture or country, with language and nuances of meaning being a further barrier to understanding.  On top of this we have our own ideas and beliefs about what being a good mother is.  Often this agenda is born from a desire to correct what we felt was missing in our own childhood.  While this desire is noble in its intention, it may miss the mark of what is currently needed.  Since it’s based on a distant past, it becomes a blindspot to what is presently real and tips the balance of our perceptions to what we want to see and feel about ourselves as mothers rather than what our children want and experience of us.  And in our own efforts to protect our sons and daughters from mistakes, we may deny them opportunities for their own growth and decision making in the process.

And then there’s the most challenging thing of all as a mother – our role is constantly changing. As our kids grow, we’re continuously saying goodbye to how things were, letting go of how we understood everything about them, little by little, day by day, absorbing the grief and trying to stay open to a new way of relating.  But it’s hard to let go of being that most important person to our child!  Perhaps we mom’s hold on to our view of our daughters and sons when they were young because it reminds us of a time we had the power to know what they liked, fix what was hurting them, and be assured of our special place in their heart.  They needed us and we liked being needed.

And so now I cherish the carrot cake.  I understand it as my mother’s way of holding on to who she was to me when I was younger.  It’s hard to share our children with the world, even if we know it’s for the best. I truly miss having that person who knew my entire history and from this unique bond, thought she would always know what I wanted because at one point when I was younger I did, indeed, very much like carrot cake.  And that memory mattered to her even more than the cake.  And now that I have the perspective, thank goodness, it also now matters to me more, as well.