On Optimism

Generally speaking I am not a neurotic person. I'm reasonably stable, but I do have my moments. I have a tendency to obsess about the worst that can happen in any given situation to the point that I end up not doing anything on the basis that the real world outside is too starkly terrifying to contemplate interacting with at all. I daren't even look at my bank statements half the time - some weird part of my brain assumes that if I never actually observe my bank balance, it will remain fine. It's like quantum theory applied to banking. My account contains Schrodinger's Money. How much easier would life be if you could just switch off the 'worry centre' of the brain?

I live in constant amazement at my girlfriend's ability to stay calm in situations that would have me gnawing my own fingers off in sheer, desperate panic. I had previously thought that optimism was the reserve of the hopelessly naive until I met her; now I wish I could learn at her feet. She is so optimistic that I wonder sometimes if her body naturally produces its own Valium. It's wonderful to behold, but also utterly baffling to me, what with me being a hybrid of Mr Grumpy and Mr Worry. If I walk down roads I start to get convinced that I will be killed from behind by a person who has just gone insane and mounted the kerb in the world's quietest car at 70 miles an hour; when I go to the shops I get paranoid that my identity has been stolen and that the police will be waiting at the shop when I use my card to ask me some questions about weapons-grade plutonium purchased on the Russian black market with it. And flying? Don't even go there. I will never, ever get on a plane. Never. Statistically speaking it's often touted as the safest way to travel. But if your aeroplane breaks down at 10,000 feet, the only option is to tuck your head between your knees and wait to die along with several dozen other people who will all insist on screaming and turning your last moments into an annoying and undignified clone of any Hollywod disaster movie ever made. If your car breaks down you just pull over and swear at it a lot before ringing the RAC. And boats? Nope, boats sink. They do, or they catch fire and fall over. And that might not happen a lot, but you can bet that it will happen when I decide to go aboard to try to conquer my fear. My whole life is a classic case of Sod's Law.

When I started writing this, I was preparing for a drive back home from our New Year's Eve holiday in the Peak District. Normally not a harrowing prospect, but then it snowed the previous night and I couldn't even get the car out of the farm without doing hilarious comedy spins on the slight slope up to the small country road - I shudder to even think about trying to get up the bigger hill a few yards further on. And the night I was writing this, the temperature was set to hit -4, freezing all of that packed snow and semi-melted slush into a black ice nightmare. I was terrified that, as the farmer towed us up the hill in his tractor, that the tractor would somehow lose its grip and plummet back down the hill into us, crushing us at the bottom; or that once on the main road, we would effortlessly slide off a curve and into a yawning chasm; or we'd be hit by a jacknifing lorry; hell, I was even worried that a Wampa would rip us apart as we tried to get into the car. And that was just the worry about the trip. I was also worried that my house might have burned down, or that a family of rabbits had moved in, or that I hadn't emptied my bin thus leaving the flat stinking of rotten bacon. Had the building itself been removed from time and space and was only accessible if I used my front door key in any other similar lock around the globe? My girlfriends' response - don't worry. It'll be fine.

And do you know what? She was fucking right. The trip home was tense, but manageable, the flat was still there and smelled fine, and it turns out that Wampas only exist in the Star Wars universe. If she could capture that optimism in a capsule she'd make millions. Millions.