Pearls: You cannot guard your heart
EDITORIAL MUG: Matt Pearl
When we eclipsed the shortest day of the year just a few days back, I felt my typical sense of relief. You can’t get to spring, after all, if you don’t turn that corner at the winter solstice.
Yes, optimism is powerful, considering what it really is. Optimism is a feeling, only as real as our psyche allows it to be. Yet there is power in any manifestation of hope, isn’t there? Who wants to go on without it?
I feel strongly that we are tasked as human beings to seek out the brightness of life’s possibilities, even when – especially when – everything around us seems dark. How many seemingly hopeless stories end with a change, a brightening, a miracle, reminders to us that even during hours of bleakness that hope remains. Believing that whatever it is, that it can get better serves as a defining trait of our race.
When the days are so short and the stress is so high, it would be so easy for us to throw our hands up in defeat, and at some point(s) most of us will do so. When life begins to feel like this endless fight, our temptation is to lower our shield and accept defeat. Hope falters during certain such moments, and we feel ourselves overcome with weakness.
But that’s when we have to look for dawn to break. We have to look at our watches and see that the sun is setting a minute later than it was just a day or two ago. We have to hold onto hope, believing that there can (and will) be more good things to come if we stand firm.
From a somewhat less serious perspective, the ushering in of longer days serves as a ‘lower-stakes’ example to me of the poser of believing that better times are ahead.
The downside is that between now and those longer, warmer days, we have January and February that we have to survive – but what a payoff! When things finally thaw and you realize unexpectedly one afternoon that your jacket is too hot, the hope you have held becomes reality, and it’s the best feeling.
That’s a long introduction to the only one of my New Year’s Resolutions that I’ll be sharing with you this year: In 2026, I’m resolving to keep a positive forward-facing perspective on everything.
The past is precious, but it’s also a dream killer. When we become to fixated upon the scenes of life that we have already lived, we often make ridiculous assumptions about the present and the future. The draw seems to assume that failure then will mean failure now and forever, and our hopeful optimism falls to the ground unceremoniously.
We wallow in missed opportunities that we never chose to take.
We express regrets for moments when we decided that giving up now would be easier to accept than trying and failing later.
I’m here to tell you – optimist that I try to be – that there’s a simple truth about human emotions that it has taken me many years to understand: You cannot guard your heart. Either use it or lose it, folks. There are no steps to defend yourself from hurt that will actually deliver, and abandoning your hope and optimism will no more protect you from pain than anything.
So Happy New Year! Hope for great things, and expect opportunities. You won’t necessarily create good times by hoping for them, but by keeping your hopes high you will be ready to seize the good times when they come to you.
Matt Pearl owns and operates The Tri-County Ledger.
