I see it at the cinema, in that moment in Brave where Merida realizes that she might not have to partake in an arranged marriage, or the moment in You’ve Got Mail when Kathleen enters into the garden where she will go on to meet the possible love of her life.

Cautious Optimism

It is the moment where something is within arms reach, yet the path is still uncleared.

We all feel it at one point or another. Something comes into our life that could turn into something more, and we enter into this tug and pull of wanting to be realistic, verging on pessimistic and wanting to be hopeful, believing that in the possibility of what we desire.

I know this occurs not only from observing it in my life but also seeing it in the lives of those close to me. For my friends, this looks like stretching towards their dream job, putting in their application and finding themselves tied to the phone, hoping they will get a callback. For my life soul mates, being cautiously optimistic means that they are believing that they can rise above the relationship mess of their past. They believe that their significant other loves them, or that this person they dream of pursuing might love them back.

When we are not allowing ourselves to be excited, many of us try to be cool, attempt to be “chill," as so many of the young folk say. We keep our heads down and our eyes forward because we do not want to get our hopes up. Unfortunately, often this behavior, over time, causes jaded feelings and apathy. So many of us stop trying to believe in possibility, we stop looking in anticipation and wonder at what the future might hold.

I think about what it would be like to hold both of these concepts together, to be realistic, but to be a bit thrilled at what might come around the corner.

Would more interesting, fun things happen in our lives if we were unafraid of everything falling apart?

About a week ago, I found my stack of notebooks that I used to carry around with me, and as I flipped through the pages, I saw the moments that lead up to other events, such as an adorable few lines that I wrote about an ex prior to the time we dated. They were words filled with excitement and anticipating. I think about how much fun I had with this guy, and how much I changed, and how differently I could have been without our lives interacting.

I believe that those things occurred because I stepped out and decided that I wanted to believe in a quiet dream. These days, I think I want to be more like that person. I want to believe that the organization might call me back, or the person might want to kiss me too. I want to allow myself to dream a little bigger, to see the endless possibilities as attainable. I think I want to be cautiously optimistic, for in the words of Jon Snow’s lover Ygritte, “If we die, we die, but first, we’ll live.”