An annual New Year’s letter to my son

Bill Knight column for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2 or 3

Dear Russell:

You’ve always been a good example.

A heckuva basketball player and a decent oboe player, a serious Eagle Scout and a funny smart-aleck, a thoughtful, measured kid and an impulsive/creative young man, self-confident but modest, you’ve nurtured a knack for being both adaptive and a healthy cynic.

There’s something somehow positive about cynicism and doubt, even pessimism.

Looking back over your 30 years, you were never an Eeyore, that moaning, morose Winnie-the-Pooh character who seemed the opposite of the Life of the Party.

Usually smiling, you always seemed to be saying what you thought, if not exactly thinking about what you felt.

Also, three-fourths of American adults are pessimistic about the future, according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute, so you’re in good company.

At a weird time when many are concerned, disappointed, panicked or angry, it’s still possible to feel gratitude and contentment. But it can be difficult to be hopeful.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, historian and newspaperman Carl Sandburg once described himself as an idealist, saying, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way!” Unfortunately or not, that often applies to me. But idealism and optimism also can leave people overconfident, whereas those who underrate what could happen or their own potential performances usually feel better when the actual – better – results occur.

Cynics and pessimists don’t assume happy endings.

Delight happens when outcomes exceed expectations. Those who live thinking people are ill-informed, our talents lacking, and our essence suspect (at best, and evil at worst) tend to be pleasantly surprised when things turn out as nice as they occasionally do.

Of course, as social critic Noam Chomsky’s said, “If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope.”

However, the road to hope may be paved with the worn bricks of uncertainty.

“Defensive pessimism” has been defined by University of Michigan researchers as expecting little, or less – even anticipating disaster – which oddly can make eventual success more likely, or at least more enjoyable when it happens – sort of a maybe-hope-for-the-best but definitely-plan-for-the-worst approach.

Another Pulitzer winner, Studs Terkel, the writer and raconteur from Chicago (where you live and practice law), once talked about Sandburg (the native of Galesburg, where you went to college) as a man who believed more than he could prove about the future.

“He found a new way in an incredulous and disbelieving age and cynical time to say what America always knew, not what is but what the possibility is.,” Terkel said.

Your straightforward demeanor continues to be constructive as well as candid.

You’re still a good example.

Love,

Dad