A guy went to an interview. He was questioned for an hour. The interviewers were impressed with his technical stuff. Then came the final question. They showed him a painting and asked him what it meant. The painting was about a scene on the river bank. A very pleasant river bank with green trees everywhere. In the middle of the river, stood an old man with half his body inside the water and both his hands raised above his head. He was trying to say to something. Seeing that, the candidate thought for a minute and then said, the man was drowning in the river and was trying to get some help. He was immediately rejected. The justification given by the interviewers was that the candidate was too pessimistic. They had expected him to say something like, the old man was performing some kind of a ritual saying some mantra aloud or something of that sort. Probably that would have meant that the candidate could take things optimistically and could think optimistically.
Why should someone be always wrong in think something pessimistically. Everything in this world has two sides. Where there is a positive, there must be a negative. A negative alone can balance a positive. If you are going to look only at the positive side, without bothering about the negative side saying that you are optimistic, what will you do if something negative happens accidentally? Its always good to be well prepared to face the bad things, rather than taking it all too unexpectedly.
If everyone should think optimistically, then we wont have all the things that we have now. Some guy made the aircraft. Probably he is a very nice optimistic guy. But someone else must have thought about it pessimistically, what happens if the aircraft runs into some problem in mid-air? He came out with parachute! If car manufacturers were over optimistic that their car will never meet with an accident, then they wouldn't have put any bumber or airbag in the car. Even in case of a software, we expect it to fail at some point or the other. Thats why companies spends millions of dollars in maintaining a testing team.
So why not go out and think a bit differently about things, never mind about pessimism or optimism. Probably we can come out with new stuffs that we never knew of.
3 comments:
Yup, dats always true! A man is a mixture of both +ves n -ves..In this case, almost 99% of d ppl think d way d guy did(drowning) dats the instinct we have in..but we are tempted to say a different answer(optimistic one)..
Btw howz u? where r u?
I am now in University of Buffalo..have come here for MS....howz u?
Yeah Right!
Being pessimistic is good at times.
But that doesn't mean that you needn't be optimistic at all. Lets take the case of an optimist who aims high, has high expectations and dreams big. If the result turns the other way, not necessarily, he is at loss! Rather, an optimist would look upon things lost as a learning and with some confidence would move ahead now happy to learn where to improve!
But whats the same in the case of a pessimist? Always thinking that he is to fail, seeing all the darker sides and losing confidence! But once he achieves, doesn't he turn optimistic? When he fails, he would be happy, but why?? that he dint expect much out of it. But he knows at the beginning that this is what he needs to get and doesn't expect, as you say. But he certainly would know that he hasn't achieved what he wants even though he hasn't expected.
I mean... Isn't it better to be optimistic majorly and pessimistic at times ,so that you would give your best and care not for the results?
PS: phew... a long comment I guess :)
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