According to the "New Oxford American Dictionary," optimism is defined as “hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something.” Therefore, an optimist is simply a person who is confident about the future. Optimists get a bad reputation for being unrealistic and too positive, which is ridiculous because literally all it means to be an optimist is to be someone who looks on the bright side of things.

1. No, we are not happy all of the time. Yes, we have sunny dispositions, but that does not mean that we’re happy about everything all the time. The basic logic to optimism is: every situation has a positive and negative outcome, even if it’s an all-around sucky situation… So why not look at the best possible outcome? If you look at life that way, you’ll find yourself to be a generally happier person, because things in your life never look as bad as they could be. Just because the world you live in is generally a happy place, however, does not mean that we are happy 100% of the time. Sadness is still sadness, even if you’re looking at it from the most positive attitude you can. Everybody feels pain, even the happiest of people.
2. Yes, we understand that not everybody can be happy all the time. A common way for optimists to comfort people is by inviting them to “look on the bright side.” As I said, if you look at things in the best light as possible, you’re making the best of the worst situations. Sometimes, people don’t want to adopt that point of view, sometimes people just need to wallow in their misery, or approach their problems from their own angles. We get that! We don’t expect you to be a relentlessly happy ball of sunshine, but our ideology is to look at things from the bright side… So naturally, our advice to you is going to be just that. If that’s not something you want to do, then don’t listen to our advice.
3. We get depression and anxiety, too. We’re just really good at hiding it. You might see an optimist and think they’re so cheerful and bright that they must never feel the scary dark thoughts that come along with depression… That’s not true. An optimist’s biggest superpower is their ability to put on a smile through anything, be careful if you’re close with an optimist, because they can have a tendency to smile through their problems. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but be careful before assuming they’re 100% happy, because there could very easily be a bigger issue underneath their smile they’re not telling you about.

Yes, we are happy people. We’re not happy robots… We just look on the bright side, it’s as simple as that.