Clay’s Court: The internal battle of being less negative

Pessimism comes naturally to me and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember.

The word is defined as “an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome” but also, “the doctrine that reality is essentially evil” and “the doctrine that evil overbalances happiness in life.”

These descriptions are heavy, no doubt, and to someone who doesn’t subscribe to this worldview (intentionally or not) it sounds like a miserable way to live.

Well, I can tell you firsthand it is.

It comes with seeing the negative side of every situation over any other, but it also means seeing the worst in people. Today’s political climate adds gasoline to that already monstrous fire.

Billionaires, who have more ill-gotten wealth (yes, all billionaires, with a “B” are unethical) than anyone could possibly know what to do with, have made it their mission to extract every molecule of value from us working-class folks and our planet. They don’t see us as anything more than cattle.

Just look at Amazon, who has clearly put profits over people by saddling their employees with overwhelming workloads. Whether that’s in the warehouses according to a 2023 Department of Labor citation, or on the delivery routes according to a 2022 story from The Guardian featuring the testimony of a driver.

Our government has become a kleptocracy (“government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed”) run by pedophilic politicians whose pockets are lined by those very same billionaires (who also own all of our news and entertainment).

On top of all that, the majority of the nation seems to have no interest in doing their civic duty by going to vote or at least being marginally involved in politics.

Only 28% of active voters (those whose voter registration information is current) showed up to the Georgia primaries according to the state’s election data hub. There are only 7.3 million active voters out of a population of 11.3 million (according to the 2025 census), and less than a third of them voted in the primaries.

As a pessimist, it’s easy to get swept up in these thoughts and carry an almost unmanageable anger towards the general state of the world.

My wife, witness to many of my rants, brought this to my attention one night: When you are so full of hate and anger, just or not, you lose the capacity for other emotions. It also makes empathy nearly impossible.

My wife is the most empathetic person I’ve met and probably will ever meet. For context, when she was a little girl, she had to sleep with all of her stuffed animals in the bed so none of them would be sad. And this wasn’t negotiable. She actually had to sleep with them all.

She actually feels the heartbreak of other people, whether it be victims of school shootings, domestic violence or overseas bombings of civilians, she feels their pain deep in her soul.

I will likely never feel that kind of empathy. But the strength of hers helps pull me towards equilibrium.

So I’ve been trying to be less negative.

The biggest part of that, for the moment, is speaking it out loud less. I’ll catch myself making an unnecessarily negative comment or joke and I’ll bite my tongue or delete the message.

Sometimes it doesn’t work and I only catch it in hindsight, but recognition is a big step in reining it in.

These are the simplest and most obvious actions to take, but the internal battle will be the hardest. If changing the way you speak is walking a steep incline, mastering your internal voice is climbing Mount Everest.

Speaking negative things less hasn’t erased my anger for the unjust state of our country or the people controlling it (whether publicly or behind the scenes). 

I don’t know how long it will take for me to simmer down, but my current strategy is to take breaks from consuming all the unpleasant information and staying involved in civics (which I admit are adverse to each other).

Recently that’s looked like researching candidates so I make (what I think is) a good choice at the polls and informing people on social media.

The other day I ran into a commenter who didn’t even know what a “primary” was, and the replies looked about as you’d expect. A lot of hateful comments along the lines of “how could you not know” and “we’re doomed.”

Admittedly, those kinds of thoughts are part of my pessimistic instincts, but I took the time to leave a reply explaining what a primary is and where they could find their state-specific information. They commented back, “Thank you for not sending me hate for a simple question!”

As frustrating as U.S. politics and the state of voter participation are, taking the time to help our neighbors, near or far, is the only way forward. None of us knew anything before somebody told us. Maybe they’ll be at the polls in November!

To someone who doesn’t struggle with pessimism, these probably seem like nothing. But the marginal results and progress will, hopefully, snowball into a happier and healthier life.